Recently, Metrologia (a leading journal in the field of time and frequency) published the academic paper Progress of BeiDou time transfer at NTSC co-authored by Guang Wei, Dong Shaowu, and Zhang Shougang, researchers at the Key Laboratory of Time-frequency Standard, the National Time Service Center (NTSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The publication marks that NTSC researches on expanding the application of Beidou Time have gained international recognition. In addition, BIPM Time Department also sent a congratulatory message to NTSC, praising it for playing a key role in the promotion and application of Beidou Time.
The paper mainly introduces the advancement of time transfer based on China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System. In order to realize BeiDou Common View (CV) time transfer, researchers at NTSC have developed rinex2cggtts software in accordance with Common GNSS Generic Time Transfer Standard, Version 2E (CGGTTS V2E). They compared the time transfer results of Beidou common view with that of GPS/GLONASS/GALILEO---three European time laboratories, acquiring massive research results. In 2017, NTSC carried out a long baseline Beidou common view time transfer experiment with European time laboratories, results of which show that the Beidou System has great potential for development in the international comparison network of UTC.
In recent years, NTSC forward-lookingly unfolded many researches on the application of Beidou time, and it has been making innovations. Researches like Study on BeiDou Common View Time Transfer, BeiDou-based Time Transfer between Asia and Europe, Research on Expanded Application of BeiDou in TAI Calculation have been completed. Besides, NTSC also did a lot of work in the application of BeiDou time in International ITU, BIPM and CCTF, making great contributions in facilitating BeiDou to become a formal method of TAI comparison.