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Quantitative Finance · Glossary

What is Grandmaster clock, GNSS time reference?

Also known as: grandmaster clock · GNSS time reference

Definition 4.8 Networks, Hardware and Trading Infrastructure · Chapter 4 — Time Synchronisation

A grandmaster clock is the clock at the top of a PTP network, the master of all others. A GNSS time reference is a receiver of a global navigation satellite system (GPS, Galileo and others) used as a source of UTC: each satellite’s signal carries the system’s time and its offset from UTC as kept by a national laboratory.

A cage’s timing chain. The grandmaster takes UTC from satellites and serves PTP; a boundary clock is a slave on one side and a master on the other; a transparent clock forwards PTP messages and corrects them for the time they spent inside it. Every link of the chain adds to the error budget of the timestamps at its end.
Figure 4.2. A cage’s timing chain. The grandmaster takes UTC from satellites and serves PTP; a boundary clock is a slave on one side and a master on the other; a transparent clock forwards PTP messages and corrects them for the time they spent inside it. Every link of the chain adds to the error budget of the timestamps at its end.
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