On 2019-07-24, Jakob Bohm <jb-use...@wisemo.com.invalid> wrote:
> On 24/07/2019 08:07, William Unruh wrote:
>> On 2019-07-24, Jakob Bohm <jb-use...@wisemo.com.invalid> wrote:
...
>>>> A good timing-optimized gps unit, like the original Oncore, have a sw
>>>> mechanism to offset the PPS event away from the actual top of the
>>>> second, as well as a way for the sw protocol that numbers the PPS
>>>> signals to also specify how far away this particular pulse is from the
>>>> actual event.
>>>>
>>>> I.e. with an internal 10 MHz clock, PPS signals will be synced to one of
>>>> those 100 ns-wide periods, so it can/will be at least up to +/-50 ns
>>>> away from the proper moment, but when the driver knows about this, it
>>>> can adjust perfectly for that effect.
>>>>
>>>> Terje
>>>>
>>>
>>> I happen to have a GPS unit (not yet connected) that is documented to do
>>> this too: The PPS pulse occurs at an edge of the internal crystal clock,
>>> but a special NMEA statement states (based on the 4D GPS solution) how
>>> many ns it is off for each pulse.  I have yet to find the point to pass
>>> this offset to ntpd after capturing the PPS arrival time.
>> 
>> The problem is this is largely irrelevant. The time it takes the
>> computer to respond to an interrupt id far far larger (and variable)
>> than that offset of the pulse which is on the at most 10s of nsec scale.
>> The computer responds on the usec scale (que the interrupt, the comp
>> responds to the que and loads or branches to the interrupt service
>> routine. The routine reads the system clock. All that takes time and a
>> variable amount of time. Ie, you need specialised hardware to make use
>> of that information, and, I thought, usually that infomation was
>> delivered by the gps unit a lond time after the pulse itself. Ie, it is
>> useful for rewriting history, not for the immediate time.
>> 
>> 
>
> The hardware under consideration can time the pulse arrivals more
> precisely than the interrupt delivery time, thanks to special hardware.

Does that hardware read the local clock of the computer, or its own
internal clock, which then means you have to also figure out what the
relation is between that hardware clock and the system time. 
It also means that you have to be careful of termination resistances in
the lines from the gps to that hardware and drive power from the clock. 
Remember the "faster than light" neutrinos, which cam down to a bad
fibre optics connection from the gps to the underground detector, making
the underground clock sightly late, making it look like neutrinos got
there faster than than they did.

The application of the corrections  should all get handled in an 
ntp driver for the gps unit, which can
apply the corrections and deliver the corrected readings to ntpd. ntpd
has about 50 different refclock drivers and one might well cover your
case. Otherwise one might need to be written.


>
> Once that has been set up (in the future), the next problem becomes
> applying the higher precision offset to the time source data input to
> the ntp algorithms.
>
> At a higher abstraction level this means telling ntp that "at
> hhmmss.xxxxxxxxx (local clock), a time stamp of hhmmss.yyyyyyyyy
> arrived from this hardware time source".

OK, that should work. The main problem is that usually that correction
comes long (seconds) after the actual pulse itself as I understand. 

>
>
>
> Enjoy
>
> Jakob

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