Safran’s White Rabbit Outperforms Alternative PNTPosition, Navigation, and Timing: PNT and map data combine to create the GPS service. Industry Requirements in European Commission Joint Research Center Test Campaign

The report states Safran’s Navigation & Timing solution can create a robust and resilient time architecture for critical infrastructure, independent of GNSSGlobal navigation satellite system (GNSS): A general term describing any satellite constellation that provides positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services on a global or regional basis. See also signals across Europe

GRANADA, Spain, June 13, 2023

White Rabbit, an essential solution in Safran’s Navigation & Timing portfolio for critical infrastructure, recently received high praise in a landmark report from the European Commission (EC) Joint Research Center (JRC) to evaluate the effectiveness of Alternative Positioning, Navigation and Timing platforms.

As technology around the world becomes more dependent on positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services provided by Global Satellite Navigation Systems (GNSS), such as the European Galileo and the U.S.A. Global Positioning System (GPSGlobal Positioning System is a navigation satellite system. See also), signal loss could be catastrophic. These disruptions could be triggered maliciously by a jamming or spoofing attack or by a GNSS system infrastructure malfunction.

For more than eight months, the commission studied a variety of available solutions to assess the performance of Alternative-PNT demonstration platforms in a variety of situations where there is signal loss and a backup system is necessary. The selected solutions were evaluated for precise and robust timing and positioning services in challenging indoor and outdoor environments. Time transfer technologies over different means, including fiber, wired channels, etc. 

Safran’s White Rabbit is a high-accuracy time and frequency distribution protocol, which combines Precise Time Protocol (PTPPrecision Time Protocol is a protocol used to synchronize clocks throughout a computer network. On a LAN network, PTP can enable the clocks on each server to be synchronized within a sub-microsecond range, thus making it suitable for demanding applications that require precise timing and control. PTP is standardized within IEEE-1588v2.) packets with the frequency base of Synchronous Ethernet (SyncESyncE - Synchronous Ethernet is a networking protocol that sends IP packets in a synchronous way from one node to another. This allows data and signals to be sent synchronously in IP networks. This solves the synchronization issue in networks, because without SyncE, networks are completely asynchronous and cannot send packets in a predictable way.) to provide sub-nanosecond time transfer accuracy over an optical fiber. While the results of the test campaign showed that all Alternative-PNT platforms under evaluation demonstrated performances in compliance with the requirements set, White Rabbit excelled in its performance. 

Safran demonstrated not only White Rabbit’s ultra-accurate time transfer over fiber optics but also its high-performance time generation, resiliency (based on failover and holdover), interoperability, and user-friendly monitoring capabilities. All of those new features are being developed along with our customers and are intended to fulfill their most demanding requirements in order to protect their critical infrastructure.

As stated in the report, Safran demonstrated, “the ability to handle multiple master clock inputs with voting and seamless switchovers. Interconnecting as many NMIs as possible, with possible local atomic clock backups, would result in a very robust and resilient time architecture, independent from GNSS across Europe. The ability to provide resilient and accurate time through the EU communication infrastructure, ideally on the nanosecond level, would also enable robust positioning, using a combination of signals.”

To download a copy of the full report, please visit:
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC132737

To learn more about Safran’s White Rabbit technology, please visit:
https://safran-navigation-timing.com/solution/white-rabbit-solutions/