Cosmic Time Synchronizer (CTS)
The current technologies and automated infrastructures continue to progress in complexity, with increasing synchronization requirements in terms of performance, security, and reliability. Especially in the last decade, there has been technological maturity where temporal synchronization in the microsecond or nanosecond range is becoming the standard in various economic sectors, infrastructure domains, and everyday life, particularly with the advent of 5G communications.
The current availability of atomic clocks or PNT (Position, Navigation, Timing) systems, such as GNSS (Global Navigation Satellites Systems), meets the above needs, although with some limitations, primarily related to cost, performance, security, and reliability. For example, widespread use of high-performance atomic clocks is only sometimes feasible, mainly due to cost reasons. On the other hand, a widely adopted solution, which is economically more accessible and offers remarkable performance, is using GNSS systems, especially (but not only) for disciplining lower-cost atomic oscillators. Despite the significant strengths of this technology, its reliance on satellite signals makes it potentially vulnerable to jamming or spoofing actions, whether malicious or unintentional. Furthermore, these techniques cannot be utilized in underground or underwater environments.
The muon-based synchronization technique CTS (Cosmic Time Synchronizer) - which relies on muons derived from relativistic cosmic ray showers and has been proposed by the University of Tokyo - can be envisaged as a complementary or alternative solution to existing methods, depending on the requirements of the final user.
Although still in the prototype stage, a group of researchers from MUOGRAPHIX, the University of Tokyo, and the International organization Virtual Muography Institute (VMI), in collaboration with INRIM and colleagues affiliated with CERN, INFN (Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics), and CREF (Enrico Fermi Research Center), recently evaluated the performance of the CTS technique using actual measurements obtained from a short-haul measurement system installed at the University of Tokyo laboratories.
The obtained results, although preliminary, are auspicious, demonstrating synchronization capabilities at the level of tens of nanoseconds (i.e., 30 ns, SD, 1σ) in terms of precision over a distance of 60 meters in an indoor environment (with reinforced concrete masonry elements of 30 cm), simulating a real-world scenario where the use of GNSS systems is not possible.
For further information: Cell Press iScience | UTokyo
