Darpa rockn program make atomic clocks portable#

The goal of DARPA's ROCKn program is to study the basic physics of the principle behind the optical clock and find a way to make optical atomic clocks with low size, weight, and power (SWaP). Chip-scale atomic clocks (CSACs) were first made commercially available in 2011, as the result of more than 20 years of continuous support by the USA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The most accurate type of atomic clock is the optical atomic clock, which replaces the microwaves with a beam of light, boosting the accuracy by a factor of 100. Not only that, they will be more precise and accurate than current state-of-the-art atomic clocks. Optical atomic clocks are so accurate, in fact, that they wouldn't have lost a second over the universe's entire existence of more than 13 billion years. Typically, optical atomic clocks are large cumbersome machines, but DARPA's ROCKn program aims to make them smaller and lighter so they can be fitted into military vehicles, and even satellites. DARPA’s Atomic Clock with Enhanced Stability (ACES) program is exploring the development of next-generation, battery-powered CSACs with 1000x improvement in key performance parameters over existing options. 'The goal is to transition optical atomic clocks from elaborate laboratory configurations to small and robust versions that can operate outside the lab,' Tatjana Curcic, program manager in DARPA's Defense Sciences Office, said in a statement. 'If we're successful, these optical clocks would provide a 100x increase in precision, or decrease in timing error, over existing microwave atomic clocks, and demonstrate improved holdover of nanosecond timing precision from a few hours to a month.

To address this problem, several DARPA programs are exploring innovative technologies and approaches that could eventually provide reliable, highly accurate PNT capabilities when GPS capabilities are degraded or unavailable. This program could create many of the critical technologies, components, and demonstrations leading to a potential future networked clock architecture. Through the exploration of alternative physics architectures and novel component technologies, three sets of researchers have demonstrated early progress toward creating CSACs with 1000x improvement in temperature control, aging, and retrace.Atomic Clocks with Enhanced Stability, or ACES.

Darpa rockn program make atomic clocks portable#

Calibration requirements and frequency drift can generate timing errors, making it difficult to achieve the highest degrees of accuracy and reliability in a portable package, the statement read. The CSACs offer unprecedented timing stability for their size, weight, and power (SWaP). Harnessing the power of atoms for precise timing requires a host of sophisticated and bulky technologies that are costly to develop and consume large amounts of energy,” DARPA said in a statement Tuesday. “Today’s communications, navigation, financial transaction, distributed cloud, and defense applications rely on the precision timing of atomic clocks – or clocks that track time based on the oscillation of atoms with the highest degrees of accuracy. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is presently working on an advanced version of its first-generation, battery-powered, miniature chip-scale atomic clock (CSAC) with 1000x performance improvements for positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) applications.ĭARPA’s Atomic Clock with Enhanced Stability (ACES) program aims to build the next-generation atomic clock owing to the limitations of the now commercially available CSACs.