GMV was awarded a £2 million contract to provide this new White Rabbit Switch, suited for protecting UK’s infrastructure. Learn more this here.
The development of the WRSv4 has been ongoing for several years, find out more here.
R&D Projects hosted by the Collaboration aim to:
Possible R&D projects include:
Projects can be executed by a sub-set of members of the collaboration, or by a single member. The Bureau will be there to provide support to the R&D projects.
The new switch will bring several improvements, including:
The open-source design of the new switch will become part of the WR Technology, available for industry to commercialise.
The new switch will have the possibility of inserting expansion boards to add new functionalities. IQD is developing the first expansion board for the switch. The expansion board will include IQD's ICPT-1, a quantum atomic clock, which will be synchronised and disciplined to the clock on the main WRS. In the event that the main WRS detects that it is no longer locked to an external source, it will revert to the time signal from the ICPT-1 thus maintaining internal time and downstream time, aka holdover.
IQD has already identified possible applications including switching to a redundant system after fault detections; during this event the holdover board would keep the WRS clock within a few nano seconds of the original signal, thus meaning no lock or time errors caused during the swap.
ICPT-1
Designed into the WR Switch v4 is the ICPT-1, a rubidium oscillator designed using the Coherent Population Trap method. The ICPT-1 provides security and accuracy of signal continuity in case of temporary signal losses with its exceptional holdover ability, and can enable stability of accurate signals down to the picosecond level. This is the first time that holdover has been addressed in the White Rabbit environment, and IQD is at the forefront of this technology.
Read more about IQD's contribution here.
