Portable Microwave Frequency Dissemination in Free Space and Implications on Ground-Satellite Synchronization

TL;DR

This paper presents a portable microwave frequency dissemination method via free space with high stability, suitable for ground-satellite synchronization, and discusses its potential to outperform existing techniques.

Contribution

Introduction of a portable, environment-adaptable microwave dissemination scheme with stability analysis and implications for satellite synchronization.

Findings

Dissemination over 10 to 640 meters with high stability.

Stability potentially reaching 1×10^{-12}/s for ground-satellite links.

Method exceeds current dissemination stability standards.

Abstract

Frequency dissemination and synchronization in free space plays an important role in global navigation satellite system, radio astronomy and synthetic aperture radar. In this paper, we demonstrate a portable radio frequency dissemination scheme via free space using microwave antennas. The setup has a good environment adaptability and high dissemination stability. The frequency signal is disseminated at different distances ranging from 10 to 640 m with a fixed 10 Hz locking bandwidth, and the scaling law of dissemination stability on distance and averaging time is discussed. The preliminary extrapolation shows that the dissemination stability may reach $1\times10^{-12}/s$ in ground-to-satellite synchronization, which far exceeds all present methods, and is worthy for further study.