On the Limits of State-of-the-Art GNSS Receivers in Frequency Transfer

Abstract

GNSS frequency transfer (FT) based on precise point positioning delivers instability values down to sub-10−16 between two modern receivers. In the present study we investigate the technical limits such receivers impose on FT by means of a dedicated experiment at Germany’s national metrology institute (PTB). For this purpose, four geodetic receivers, two of the same type each, were all connected to one single antenna and fed by the highly stable UTC (PTB) frequency signal. Since all error sources affecting the satellite signals are the same for all receivers, they cancel out when forming receiver-to-receiver single differences (SDs). Due to the fact that the remaining SD carrier phase ambiguities can be easily fixed to integer values, only the relative receiver clock error remains in the SDs. We assess the instability of three different receiver combinations, two with the same receiver type (intra-receiver) and one with different types (inter-receiver). The intra-receiver pairs reach lower instability values faster than the inter-receiver combination, which is in part caused by the different signal tracking modes of the receivers. To be specific, the 10−18 instability range was only reached by the intra-receiver pairs, whereas the inter-receiver combination already hits its noise floor at about 1.5 ⋅ 10−17. In addition, our analysis of using different observation type combinations only shows small differences regarding the link instability.