A High Accuracy Time Comparison using Time Comparison Equipment (TCE) on the Engineering Test Satellite (ETS -Ⅷ)

摘要

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) developed the Time Comparison Equipment (TCE) on-board the Engineering Test Satellite Ⅷ (ETS-Ⅷ). The ETS-Ⅷ is a Japanese geostationary satellite, which was launched on December 2006. ETS-Ⅷ has missions for mobile communication experiments and for precision timing experiments using Cesium atomic clocks in space. We carried out time transfer of the time difference between onboard standards and the ground reference clocks. This paper describes on the results of the time transfer experiment and the correction of the ionospheric delays using the estimated absolute value of Total Electron Contents (TEC) by the Space Weather and Environment Informatics Laboratory of NICT.