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Microchip Technology has released the TimeProvider 4500 v3 grandmaster clock (TP4500) designed to deliver sub-nanosecond accuracy for time distribution across 800 km long-haul optical transmission.
Most current deployments require GNSS at grandmaster sites, but the TP4500 enables highly resilient synchronization without relying on GNSS, providing critical infrastructure operators with complementary positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). The TP4500 is a resilient, terrestrial solution for the absence of GNSS in precise timing, alleviating physical obstruction, security and signal interference costs associated with GNSS-dependent deployments.
The TP4500 supports time reference provided by UTC(k) UTC time provided by national labs. It offers a premium capability that delivers High Accuracy Time Transfer (HA-TT) as defined by ITU-T G.8271.1/Y.1366.1 (01/2024) to meet 5 nanoseconds (ns) time delay over 800 km (equating to 500 picoseconds (ps) average per node, assuming 10 nodes), setting a new industry benchmark for accuracy.
The TP4500 system can be configured with multiple operation modes to form an end-to-end architecture known as virtual PRTC (vPRTC), capable of delivering PRTC accuracy over a long-distance optical network. vPRTC is a carrier-grade architecture for terrestrial distribution of HA-TT, which has been widely deployed in operator networks throughout the world.
TimeProvider 4500 v3 is a key steppingstone towards support of the ITU-T G.8272.2 standard, which defines a coherent network reference time clock (cnPRTC) in amendment 2 (2024). An cnPRTC architecture ensures highly accurate, resilient, and robust timekeeping throughout a telecom network. This allows stable, network-wide ePRTC time accuracy, even during periods of regional or network-wide GNSS unavailability or other failures and interruptions.
