Manufacturing optimization for improved AT crystal aging: preliminary results

The military's focus on affordable "smart weapons" using GPS has put new emphasis on an age old problem: Is it possible to control or bound the aging of oscillators? These new weapons are expected to be in storage for up to 20 years with minimal performance degradation regarding initial acquisition of the GPS signal used for primary navigation. Advances in signal processing are just beginning to help address the frequency drift problem, but jamming and other considerations still make it advantageous to minimize long term aging of the GPS frequency standard. The focus of this study is intended to investigate tailored manufacturing processes to optimise long term storage of any product using GPS such as PGM weapons, at an affordable cost. An equally important consideration is to evaluate how excursions to cold temperatures affect the preaging process and if possible characterize these effects for one distinct manufacturing process.