High-precision Frequency Drift Compensation Study of High-performance Rubidium Atomic Clock

Abstract

With their high reliability, small size and low power consumption, rubidium atomic clocks are widely used in the fields of navigation, communication, etc. In particular, rubidium atomic clocks for navigation satellites have developed excellent stability. However, their inherent frequency drift characteristics (about E-12 to E-13/day) will deteriorate their long-term performance and affect the autonomous punctual timing of satellites. In this paper, we fully analyzed the frequency data of high-performance rubidium atomic clocks, aiming to figure out the physical mechanism behind the frequency drift. A high-precision frequency drift compensation scheme is proposed and experimentally verified. The results show that the drift rate of high-performance rubidium clock can be maintained in the order of E-15/day within 60 days without external taming, and the day stability can reach the order of E-15 (Allan variance), which greatly improves the autonomous punctual timing ability of rubidium atomic clock．

Keywords

• rubidium atomic clock
• frequency drift
• frequency drift compensation
• autonomous punctual timing