Fault detection in atomic clock frequency standards affected by mean and variance changes and by an additive periodic component: the GLRT approach

Atomic clocks are measurement instruments widely employed for satellite navigation purposes, that need to be constantly monitored in order to guarantee high accuracy of the end-user application. Many research activities successfully investigated techniques for increasing clocks accuracy. However, more demanding specifications require the analysis of new efficient techniques for monitoring the behavior on-board and for revealing eventual faults of atomic clocks. In this paper a statistical fault detection method is described and validated. The presented method could be employed for designing technical parameters of an algorithm for fault detection of on-board atomic clock and could be a good candidate as clock monitoring algorithm in the next space missions.