“With a portable atomic clock, an ambulance, for example, will be able to still access their mapping whilst in a tunnel”
The British government has pledged £36 million towards a National Timing Centre – a new network of atomic clocks that will free the country from dependency on precise time sources provided by third-party satellite infrastructure.
In the event of failure or lock-out from global satellite positioning infrastructure, the centre – which will not be a physical building – will have in place a network of resilient atomic clocks that will act as accurate timing systems.
This would be crucial for the resilience critical infrastructure such as 4G/5G networks, the stock exchange, the energy grid and for the emergency services that require hugely precise time-stamps, the government said today.
For location and timing data the emergency and public services currently use a mixture of the US-operated Global Positioning System (GPS) and the EU’s Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS); facilitated by the Galileo constellation.
Source: CBR Online
