Experiment using the Time Comparison Equipment on-board ETS-VIII: A High Accuracy Time Comparison using Time Comparison Equipment (TCE) on the Engineering Test Satellite (ETS-VIII)

Abstract

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) developed the Time Comparison Equipment (TCE) on-board the Engineering Test Satellite VIII (ETS-VIII). The ETS-VIII is a Japanese geostationary satellite, which was launched on December 2006. ETS-VIII has missions for mobile communication experiments and for precision timing experiments using Cesium atomic clocks in space. We carried out time transfer of the time difference between onboard standards and the ground reference clocks. This paper describes on the results of the time transfer experiment and the correction of the ionospheric delays using the estimated absolute value of Total Electron Contents (TEC) by the Space Weather and Environment Informatics Laboratory of NICT.