English

Time Reversal Enabled Fiber-Optic Time Synchronization

Signal Processing 2023-04-24 v1 Optics

Abstract

Over the past few decades, fiber-optic time synchronization (FOTS) has provided fundamental support for the efficient operation of modern society. Looking toward the future beyond fifth-generation/sixth-generation (B5G/6G) scenarios and very large radio telescope arrays, developing high-precision, low-complexity and scalable FOTS technology is crucial for building a large-scale time synchronization network. However, the traditional two-way FOTS method needs a data layer to exchange time delay information. This increases the complexity of system and makes it impossible to realize multiple-access time synchronization. In this paper, a time reversal enabled FOTS method is proposed. It measures the clock difference between two locations without involving a data layer, which can reduce the complexity of the system. Moreover, it can also achieve multiple-access time synchronization along the fiber link. Tests over a 230 km fiber link have been carried out to demonstrate the high performance of the proposed method.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2304.11083,
  title  = {Time Reversal Enabled Fiber-Optic Time Synchronization},
  author = {Yufeng Chen and Hongfei Dai and Wenlin Li and Fangmin Wang and Bo Wang and Lijun Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.11083},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:13:56.164Z