IEEE-1588 Deployed on the Eastern Range

Abstract : The Air Force has installed a pilot program at the Eastern Range where new IEEE 1588 enabled GPS Timing receivers have been deployed at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Kennedy Space Center, and Patrick Air Force Base and are performance monitored, independently of GPS. This is the first known deployment of IEEE 1588 where Master and Slave IEEE 1588 devices have been installed on a single Ethernet network, over such a large area. The IEEE 1588 Grandmaster is located in the operations control center and is disciplined by a cesium steered by USNO via Two-Way Satellite Time Transfer System. An automated workstation at the operations control center collects health and status from the GPS receivers. GPS IEEE 1588 difference data are also collected to validate that GPS timing signals provided to remote instrumentation are accurate within 2 microseconds. This paper will describe the recently deployed system and share some of the early performance data collected.