National Time and Frequency Network trials receive funding

Stephen Withers
Friday, 19 August 2011 07:50

Business IT - Networking

If you ask someone for the time, you're probably satisfied if the answer is accurate to the minute. But for some commercial and scientific purposes, much greater accuracy is needed.

With $600,000 funding from the Australian Research Council, AARNet and a consortium of research organisations will begin trials aimed at the development of a national time and frequency network (NTFM). Such a network is needed to provide convenient access to the National Measurement Institute's time and frequency standards with a high degree of accuracy.

How accurate? Guido Aben, AARnet's e-research director, said the clock would be accurate to one second per 1,000,000,000,000,000 seconds. "Given that the universe is about 433.6 times 10e15 seconds old, that clock drifts about 433 seconds during the lifetime of the universe."

The Australian NTFM will be the largest in the world, spanning 4000km. Similar technology is used in Europe over 900km on dedicated networks. Aben said "These trials will demonstrate the feasibility of an Australian NTFN over ten times more expansive then its European counterparts, utilising AARNet's existing network. It will provide Australian academics with a competitive advantage over their international colleagues."

Apart from relatively mundane activities such as allowing transactions to be accurately timestamped, a range of scientific activities will benefit from an NTFM.

"Access to accurate time data is critical to many research initiatives," said Professor Andre Luiten, University of Western Australia. "The existence of this technology, delivered through the NTFN, would, for example, boost Australia's bid for the Square Kilometre Array radio-astronomy project. Accurate time signals allow us to fuse together what different telescopes across the country can see at a particular moment to give a single coherent picture."

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