Inside Frequency Control

The U.S Department of Homeland Security considers 13 of the nation’s 16 critical infrastructure sectors to be ‘critically dependent’ on PNT technology. Also, a loss of PNT would cost the U.S an estimated $10 BILLION a day. Not only do many everyday consumers use PNT & GPS on a daily basis, it's also crucial for military and intelligence operations. Other industries that strongly rely on GPS based PNT include

• Radio communications
• Network synchronization
• Intelligence systems
• Information gathering
• Cruise missiles
• Weapons systems
• Electronic warfare

Is it too early to start thinking about holiday gifts? Absolutely not! The holiday season is approaching quickly, so we wanted to help you start thinking through some great gift ideas for the engineers in your life (or soon to be). We also wanted to make this your not-so-average gift idea post that doesn't include your typical (boring) engineering mug or neck-tie gifts. Without further ado, here's 10 unique holiday gifts for engineers.

Ahh the mysterious OCXO. What the heck is an OCXO anyway? What's it good for? When should you use one in your electronic system design? These questions and more will all be answered in this post.

Precise timing across a variety of networks and industries is becoming a necessity. Both operationally and legally.  It's actually pretty amazing to see the evolution of timing & frequency control throughout different industries. There's been significant timing innovations over the past 5-10 years alone.

A Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) is becoming critical in Department of Defense (DoD) systems. If you're unfamiliar with this critical system design approach (or need a little brush-up) you're in the right place (and should totally keep on reading to discover the 5 core principles).

But first, a few quick basics. MOSA is a business and technical strategy for easily developing new defense systems or modernizing existing ones. This will help the Department of Defense provide joint combat capabilities required for 21st century warfare.

MOSA also provides the ability to support and evolve these 21st century capabilities over their total life-cycle.

The development of crystal oscillators has literally changed the world. Technically that can (and is) said about many things. But think about it! Without crystal oscillators, we may have never seen precision timing in clocks, wide and clear radio broadcasts, or important communication methods within military and space programs.

Imagine how different our world might be without these now commonplace technologies. 

Building resilience into Global Positioning System (GPS) timing and frequency receivers is crucial in the 21st century. Since the presidential directive on U.S Space-Based Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) and Critical Infrastructure Protection (PPD-21), federal agencies have been advancing their efforts when it comes to GPS and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) capabilities. 

In 1994, the world's first digital satellite TV services were launched in Thailand and South Africa. They utilized the newly developed Digital Video Broadcasting Satellite (DVB-S) system.

Over time, DVB-S became the most popular system for delivering digital TV broadcasts. Technology has advanced and spread tremendously since then, which lead to an increased need for advances to the DVB-S system. Thus, the DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X systems were born!

Let's take a look at these two DVB standards and the main differences between them. 

We can't possibly be the only intelligent life-forms in this infinite universe, can we? I mean, there's still plenty of exploring to do in our own solar system let alone nearby stars, our entire galaxy, and surrounding galaxies. Will our current deep space communication efforts, like Voyager 1, ever stumble across alien life so us humans can say, "Hi! We're here!"? Or will it take so long that our messages would be more like, "Hi! We were here!"? 

Let's explore some current communication efforts to make contact with aliens and how they work.

Since the beginning of NASA, radio communication has been the go-to method of communication for spacecrafts. Well, that's about to change. NASA has recently announced they will be making a major change to some of their upcoming communication systems by implementing new, cutting-edge, laser communication technology.