High-precision two-way time transfer system via long-distance commercial fiber link

Abstract

Time synchronization techniques, especially on the pulse per second (PPS) temporal basis, have attracted growing research interests in recent years. In this paper, we have proposed and experimentally demonstrated a high-precision two-way time transfer (TWTT) system to realize long-distance dissemination of 1 PPS signal generated by a hydrogen maser. A dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing (DWDM) system and bi-directional erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (Bi-EDFAs) have also been adopted to suppress the impact of Rayleigh backscattering and optimize the signal to noise ratio (SNR) as well. We have theoretically analyzed the systematic delay in detail. The ultimate root mean square (RMS) variation of time synchronization accuracy is sub-26 ps and the time deviation can be reduced to as low as 1.2 ps at 100 s and 0.253 ps at 12 000 s, respectively.

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This work has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.61571244 and 61501262), the Science and Technology Project of Tianjin (No.16YFZCSF00540), and the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (No.15JCYBJC51600).