Optical Fiber Trans-national Time Transfer for Comparing Two UTC Realisations

A trans-national optical fiber time transfer link, based on the White Rabbit Precision Time Protocol has between established between the UTC timescale realizations of the Belgian Metrology Service (SMD) in Brussels, Belgium and the ESTEC Radio Navigation Laboratory in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. The link consists of a single fiber covering a span of approximately 260 km. For verification, the optical fiber time transfer is compared with GPS-based common view time transfer. The results of the two techniques agree well within the combined uncertainties. The estimated uncertainty for the optical fiber time transfer is 0.2 ns.