Design of a ku band delay difference calibration device for TWSTFT station

The measurement of the delay difference between the transmission and reception parts of Two Way Satellite Time and Frequency Transfer (TWSTFT) earth station equipment and the monitoring of this delay difference in time versus temperature, pressure, humidity (stability) is crucial for the measurement uncertainty and for TWSTFT capabilities. The national metrology institute BNM-SYRTE designed a new Ku-band delay difference calibration device for the TWSTFT earth station recently installed at the Observatoire de Paris (Achkar et al., 2003). It is based on the satellite simulator technique developed by VSL (de Jong and Polderman, 1994, and de Jong et al., 1994), and TUG (Kirchner et al., 1995) with a faster and accurate delay calibration process.