The PHARAO time and frequency performance verification system

Author

Guillemot, Philippe ; Dutrey, Jean-Francois ; Vega, Jean-Francois ; Chaubet, Michel ; Chebance, Daniel ; Sirmain, Christian ; Santarelli, Giorgio ; Chambon, Damien ; Laurent, Philippe ; Rousselet, Michel ; Locke, Clayton ; Ivanov, Eugene ; Tobar, Micheal

Author_Institution

French Space Agency, CNES, Toulouse, France

fYear

2004

fDate

23-27 Aug. 2004

Firstpage

785

Lastpage

789

Abstract

The PHARAO cold atoms clock, which is scheduled to fly in 2007 with the ESA ACES mission, will be assembled and tested at the CNES facilities in Toulouse. Assembly of the engineering model has already started with electrical integration of the on-board computer and the microwave source. Verification of the metrological performances of both the engineering and flying models is one of the main challenges of integration activities. A test at the 10^-15 level is needed to extrapolate the behaviour of the clock performances in space in the 10^-16 range. The paper describes the detailed architecture and metrological features of this time and frequency test system with a preliminary evaluation of the metrological performances of the PHARAO microwave source.

Keywords

aerospace instrumentation; atomic clocks; electronic equipment testing; frequency measurement; microwave generation; time measurement; cold atoms clock; engineering model; flying model; frequency test system; metrological performance; microwave source; on-board computer; orbital cold atoms atomic clock; time test system; Aerospace engineering; Assembly; Atomic beams; Clocks; Frequency synthesizers; Masers; Performance evaluation; Phase noise; Stability; System testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Frequency Control Symposium and Exposition, 2004. Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International

ISSN

1075-6787

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8414-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FREQ.2004.1418567

Filename

1418567