Master Clock Building at USNO Infrastructure

摘要

The U.S. Naval Observatory recently completed a new facility to house its rubidium fountains as well as hydrogen masers, cesium-beam-tube clocks, and future clocks. The design and performance of the building itself is key to providing a good environment to house the clocks. Additionally, the measurement, dissemination, and future capabilities of the infrastructure electronics are critical to achieving mission goals and supporting requirements into the future. This paper reviews some of the building design choices and then describes the ac power, dc power, telemetry, and measurement system configurations. The United States Naval Observatory is in the process of building up six rubidium fountains to support and improve the clock ensemble that produces UTC (USNO). In order to provide the best environment for the new fountains, as well as other current and future clocks, a new building was designed and constructed at the USNO facility in Washington, DC. This paper looks at some of the features of this new building along with the support electronics, measurement gear, and distribution hardware.