Short-Term Stability of ATA Time-Signals

Short-term stability of the 10 MHz ATA time code signals transmitted from New Delhi, has been studied for 27 days between December 1979 and May 1980, for the New-Delhi-Srinagar path (Great circle distance ~712 km. The results reveal that the offsets in ATA epochs lie within ±100 μs in 99% cases, and, are mainly due to the short period amplitude fading of the ATA signal received at Srinagar. Suggestions are made about the possible ways of minimizing these epoch offsets and thus improving the synchronization precision of remotely located clocks using ATA signals as reference time markers.