ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military researchers are asking industry to develop optical precision timing technologies to increase the precision of small, rugged, lightweight clocks in optical networks that will provide position, navigation, and timing (PNT) in the absence of Global Positioning System (GPS) signals.
Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., issued a broad agency announcement last week (HR001122S0023) for the Robust Optical Clock Network (ROCkN) program.
The ROCkN project seeks to develop enabling technologies in optical timing and networking technologies to increase precision and holdover of small, rugged, lightweight clocks.
ROCkN will develop two types of robust, low size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP) optical clocks: portable clocks with 100 times higher precision than today's state-of-the-art portable clocks; and transportable clocks with a month holdover of GPS-quality time.
Both clocks are to be engineered sufficiently to operate independent from human operators in outside-the-lab environments for extended periods of time.
Precision timing is ubiquitous and essential today for many civilian and military applications like communication systems, electrical power grids, air traffic control, and financial networks. Moreover, critical components in many military operations like precision navigation and sensor fusion rely on precision timing.
The primary sources of precise time today are GPS satellites, each of which has an atomic clock on board that disseminate precise time throughout the world and reference regularly to the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) master clock in Washington.
All state-of-the-art atomic clocks today operate using microwave atomic transitions, ranging from prototype atomic fountain clocks that serve as atomic frequency references for the time standard at USNO and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to small commercial Rubidium Atomic Frequency Standard (RAFS) clocks that are deployed on GPS satellites.
Related: DARPA eyes photonic integrated circuits for non-GPS position, navigation, and timing (PNT)
Yet timing technologies based on microwave transitions are limited in precision. That's where the DARPA ROCkN project comes in. ROCkN focuses on developing precision timing technologies based on optical atomic transitions.
The ROCkN program builds on two decades of advancement of optical atomic clocks in the lab with the goal to develop technologies that can operate in the field. ROCkN has one 24-month first phase, and an optional 24-month second phase.
Companies interested should upload abstracts by 10 Feb. 2022, and full proposals by 4 April 2022 to the DARPA BAA website at https://baa.darpa.mil.
Email questions or concerns to DARPA's Tatjana Curcic, the ROCkN program manager, at [email protected]. More information is online at https://sam.gov/opp/a6938fed0e184906871e938d84c85f8d/view.
