[time-nuts] WWVB Now a Monopoly

Clint Turner turner at ussc.com
Wed Sep 26 17:31:36 UTC 2012


In reviewing the NIST document, I don't see anything particularly 
difficult about the new format - either in terms of extracting the time 
or phase/frequency information from the transmissions.  With 
undersampling, carrier recovery (to determine phase and amplitude 
information) should be do-able even with a fairly low-end microprocessor.

It occurred to me that, as was the case with the old format, this new 
one could *still* be implemented entirely in glue-logic LSI hardware 
(think "7400" or "4000" series):  True, it would take several dozen 
chips to do this, but it would be perfectly do-able - even the 
implementation of parity.

The tricky part would be the conversion of the seconds to usable 
time/date with glue logic - but then again, a bit of clever use with 
lookup ROMs (violating the glue logic premise a bit!) could clear that up.

About the only part that is "unknown" is the message format - which is 
not essential to the operation of any receiver in terms of determining 
time/frequency - which would be interesting to know more about.

Clint
KA7OEI





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