Israel´s new synchronized time scale UTC (INPL)

The National Physical Laboratory of Israel (INPL) together with Time and Frequency Limited (TFL) and NBS is building a software clock to be used as the Israeli national time base, UTC (INPL). The software clock is based on several commercial Cs clocks whose outputs are routed sequentially through a TFL-programmed switch into a time interval counter. The phase differences are processed in a personal computer using a procedure adopted from NBS to generate the software clock. The system also has an input from a common-view GPS receiver for time comparisons. Steering of the software clock is possible from the PC keyboards. The principles of generating the software clock, its performance and the method used to compare it to UTC and UTC (NBS) are presented. Also the optimization procedures for synchronizing and syntonizing UTC (INPL) with UTC as a coordinated time scale are presented