[time-nuts] GPS Satellite Elevation Observation

[Rob Kimberley]

Brooke,

I don't know the TAC32. Is it a timing receiver? Does it work in a "time
locked" mode whereby position is fixed after a position averaging mode, and
then uses most of its processing power to provide timing, or is it a nav
receiver that is continually calculating position, and also giving a 1PPS.
If it is the latter, you will get much larger variations in the PPS
accuracy.

Rob

-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com]On
Behalf Of Brooke Clarke
Sent: 15 April 2006 22:15
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: [time-nuts] GPS Satellite Elevation Observation


Hi:

I'm seeing distortion in the time interval between GPS and the FTS4060
standard.  The time interval jumps about 60 ns for about 4 hours and I
think it's because the satellite signal(s) have multipath.  I would
expect multipath if the satellite was being tracked at or very near the
horizon.  In TAC32 you can plot the horizon by setting the mask angle to
zero and letting the program run for a number of days.

But, when you increase the elevation mask angle I think the horizon plot
is just moved up.  I think this may be a bug in version 2.7.2.

Because of the orbit inclination there's a region to the north where
there never will be a satellite.  So for a given latitude there's some
elevation mask which would never let any satellite be near the horizon.
But that is wasting the good fixes that can be obtained when satellites
are to the West, South or East at lower elevation angles.  It would be
better if TAC32 would allow the elevation mask to be different for
different azimuth angles.  I think this would improve the quality of
time interval measurements or to say it another way it would be useful
in getting rid of bad time intervals.

I'm sensitive to this because I'm in a canyon and need a mask angle of
about 60 degrees.  The above problem may have been caused by setting the
mask angle to 50 degrees.  I'm now replotting the horizon in TAC32 with
the mask set for 60 degrees and expect to see a solid circle, not the
noisy horizon plot that was there (which was moved up from the zero
degree plot).

After about 4 weeks my FTS4060 plot shows -7 ns/day but with an R^2
value of only 0.54.  Part of the reason for such a low correlation may
be the above mask angle allowing skimming passes?

Have Fun,

Brooke Clarke

--
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