Cosmic time synchronizer (CTS) for wireless and precise time synchronization using extended air showers

Abstract

Precise time synchronization is an essential technique required for financial transaction systems, industrial automation and control systems, as well as land and ocean observation networks. However, the time synchronization signals based on the global-positioning-system (GPS), or global-navigation-satellite-system, are sometimes unavailable or only partially available in indoor, underground and underwater environments. In this work, the simultaneous and penetrative natures of the muon component of the extended air shower (EAS) were used as signals for time synchronization in environments with little or no GPS coverage. CTS was modeled by combining the results of previous EAS experiments with OCXO holdover precision measurements. The results have shown the capability of CTS to reach perpetual local time synchronization levels of less than 100 ns with a hypothetical detector areal coverage of larger than 2 × 10−4. We anticipate this level of areal coverage is attainable and cost-effective for use in consumer smartphone networks and dense underwater sensor networks.

Message Transfer with Cosmic Muons

“…Each 1-m 2 detector costs approximately 10k USD, therefore the total costs to prepare the entire system would be around 30M USD. When not actively engaged with message transfer, this detector network can also be used for precise intra-city time dissemination (station-to-station time synchronization and robust distribution of UTC to each o ce building in the city) with a cosmic time synchronizer 47 .…”

“…GCRs are de ected during their propagation in the galaxy and lose their initial directional information before arriving the Earth; therefore, they uniformly precipitate onto the Earth. A technique called muography uses muons to visualize the internal structure of gigantic objects, taking advantage of the muon's universality and their relativistic (hence, penetrative) nature; muography has been applied to many large structures including volcanoes in Europe 22,23,24 , the Americas 25,26,27 , and Asia 28, 29,30,31,32,33,34,35 , tectonics 36,37 earthquake remnants 38 , tsunami 39 , cyclones 40 , social infrastructure 41 and cultural heritage in Africa 42 , Europe 43,44 and Asia 37 as well as to muometric positioning 45 , navigation 46 , timing 47 , and post-quantum cryptography 48 .…”

Cosmic Time Calibrator for Wireless Sensor Network

“…Consequently, they can travel more than 15 km before reaching sea level. The cosmic-ray muon's heavy mass and their relativistic nature enable us to use muons for many purposes including: positioning 17 , navigation 18 and timing 15 (PNT) signals and also as radiographic probes to visualize volcanoes 19 , past earthquakes 20 , cultural heritage 21 , tsunami 22 , and tropic cyclones 23 . The muon's velocity is almost constant since it has a very small dependence on γ (for γ>>1) such that:…”

“…Furthermore, due to the penetrative nature of cosmic-ray muons, the muon signals are available in environments which are inaccessible to RF signals or which restrict the transmission of RF signals. Tanaka 15 proposed Cosmic Time Synchronizer (CTS), a technique that utilizes the simultaneous nature of the arrival time of extended air shower (EAS) particles to synchronize clocks located within the shower disk. This technique is useful when the size of the area to be synchronized is an order of ~ km 2 .…”

Cosmic coding and transfer for ultra high security near-field communications

“…A novel technique for navigation and synchronization of distant clocks using the relativistic nature of cosmic-ray muons has already been proposed with muometric positioning 36 and navigation 37 and the Cosmic Time Synchronization by Tanaka. 38 These techniques utilize the known speed of muons (near the speed of light in a vacuum) to measure the distance between vertically spaced detectors. This technique works inversely, such that if the distant clocks are already synchronized and if the sender knows the distance between the sender’s detector and the receiver’s detector, the sender will also know the exact cosmic-ray muon’s arrival time at the receiver.…”