David Mitlyng for Xairos

Timing is Everything
GPS was borne out of the space age nearly a half a century ago.
But for two decades we have known that something better is needed.
Timing from GPS is good enough for 4G LTE, but only barely good enough for 5G and not nearly accurate enough for 6G.
Now, with the advancement of four core technologies, the conditions are finally ripe for a replacement:

1. Cheap access to space
2. Commercial quantum communication systems
3. The golden age of atomic clocks
4. Ubiquitous space-based optical communications hardware

The need for a better global timing system has been around since networks went digital.
But you can't bake the perfect cake until the ingredients are ready.
Timing is everything.

Last Week's Theme: How to Transfer Time

• The team is growing, Summer internship program is underway, and the Board of Advisors is coming together
• Working on overseas projects and expansion.
• Progress on the proof-of-concept (POC) hardware development continues.
• Looking ahead to the next project beyond the POC, including our first satellite.
• Developing new government projects and commercial partnerships.

• “Why Isn’t Russia jamming GPS harder in Ukraine?” There has been local jamming in Ukraine and even around Finland and Norway, but “Russian interference with GPS in Ukraine has not been nearly as aggressive as many observers had expected.”
• Last week a cybersecurity firm found a security flaw in a GPS vehicle tracker built by a Chinese firm that “if exploited, cut off a vehicle’s fuel, physically stop it, or surveil its movement.” This week the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an alert on this tracker that potentially is used in 1.5M vehicles including 420,000 government vehicles.
• The fragility of GPS has spurred countries to prepare countermeasures. South Korea has started developing their own PNT network and is running a civil drill with GPS jamming.
• A quantum internet that will network quantum computers is likely decades away, but National Defense University researchers published a roadmap on how to get there.
• Only halfway through 2022, VC fundraising is set to surpass 2021 record, according to a PitchBook analysis.
• According to Euroconsult, “nearly a ton of smallsats will be launched per day between 2022-2031 as over 18,500 smallsats are placed on orbit.”
• A new Strategic Options task force was established on the Defense Science Board (DSB) to "rebalance intervention cost and benefit" and restore the U.S. military's "operational dominance."

• Small Satellite Conference, August 6 - 11, Logan, Utah
• Optics + Photonics, August 21 - 25, San Diego, CA
• ION GNSS+ 2022, September 19 - 23, Denver, CO
• IEEE Quantum Week 2022, September 18 - 23, Broomfield, CO
• APSCC 2022, October 18 - 20, Seoul, Korea
• Tough Tech Summit, October 27 - 28, Boston, MA
• International Timing and Sync Forum, November 7 - 10, Dusseldorf, Germany

All networks rely on timing from GPS. So what happens when GPS goes down?
Well, you hope it comes back online. And quickly.
An extended outage would result in the degradation, then loss, of all financial transactions, communications, and eventually power.
If you want your networks to last more than a few hours, you need to build in resiliency against an outage, known as holdover.
And that can get expensive.
There are a number of ways to do this, but they all rely on adding in multiple additional sources of timing independent of GPS.
For example, you can add in very stable clocks, spatially separated GPS receivers, or equipment that can receive timing signals from other GNSS satellites (like BeiDou or Galileo) throughout the network.
But that requires the expense of additional hardware as well as designing a timing network.

To learn more, please email us or schedule a meeting here.