On 30 Sep 2011, at 1532, Peter Vince wrote:

> If they were using stand-alone caesium clocks, then yes - gravity and
> altitude would make big difference.  But they locked their clocks to a
> single common-view GPS satellite - surely, then, they were both
> ticking at the same rate, and in sync?

If you don't have access to the encrypted L2 frequency, what is the lower bound 
on clock precision for two separated stations observing some common-view 
satellites?  I would have thought that propagation in the ionosphere would 
introduce enough uncertainty to make 60ns precision unlikely.   It's difficult 
for the non-specialist to know which errors were reduced by the removal of SA 
and which errors are inherent to the technology, but one paper I found [1] says 
that use of the ionospheric model that is transmitted on L1 isn't anything like 
perfect:

> Using the broadcast model under normal conditions removes about half of the 
> error (Fees and Stephens 1987) leaving a residual error of around 60-90 
> nanoseconds during the day and 10 to 20 nanoseconds at night (Knight and 
> Rhoades 1987).

I presume that some of these errors can be corrected if you know your location 
accurately, but what is the real state of the art?

ian

[1] Dana, P. H. Global Positioning System (GPS) time dissemination for 
real-time applications. Real-Time Systems 12, 9-40 (1997).



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