Electronic system for drift clock calculation and synchronization for seafloor observatory

Abstract

The paper describes a new electronic device that allows an easily measurement of the drift between a reference time source (usually GPS) and an atomic rubidium clock which is normally used in seafloor observatories. The Rubidium clock is used in autonomous seafloor observatories to supply reference time for data acquisition with the precision of milliseconds. During the deployment of seafloor observatory the clock is synchronized with GPS. It is critical to evaluate the time drift between the clock and the GPS, when the observatory is recovered. In fact, thanks to an accurate drift measurement it’s possible to have a correct timestamp for data series collected by seafloor observatory’s instruments. The device described in this paper is composed by an Arduino mega shield integrated with other electronic circuits. The device is easily customizable for different clocks in fact Arduino IDE allows development of the desired features for the rubidium clock used in the specific application.