PURETIME

This project aims to address the challenge of fully traceable, secure and certified dissemination of the high precision national timescale from NPL and the National Timing Centre to provide a UK sovereign solution for critical national infrastructure and to support the security of our emerging digital society.

A variety of critical infrastructure services, such as reliable energy supply, safe transport links, mobile communications, data networks and electronic financial transactions rely on accurate and trustworthy time synchronisation for effective functioning. Up to 90% of these systems rely on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) for a timing signal. However, GNSS signals are easily disrupted either accidentally or maliciously, and in prolonged GNSS unavailability, these critical services stop functioning. The reliance on GNSS for precision timing, and the consequent vulnerability of our essential services prompted Innovate UK to commission a report published by London Economics in June 2017\. It estimated the impact on the UK economy of a five day GNSS outage at £5.2B. That message is becoming widely understood and is creating a demand for timing solutions that are not GNSS dependent as a matter of sovereignty.

The innovative time dissemination solution arising from this project fulfills this need and will find widespread application in precision timing for base stations, network servers for financial services, data centres, national power distribution networks and air traffic control systems. It will maximise access and security of the data we use and exchange, enhance research and education and create new markets for time and frequency synchronisation from electronic signature and certification in legal and commercial to leisure and entertainment.

Further applications arise in areas where no GNSS signal is available and where synchronisation or timestamping using a certified legal time source is required. This project will aim to demonstrate the feasibility of a secure, traceable certified system that derives directly from the National Timescale and benefits a range of critical capabilities in civil and military applications to bring security and economic gains for the UK.