GPS/PCI timing signal generator

Student: Seng Teck Edwin Chong

Supervisor: Dr. Vaughan Clarkson

Category: Electrical Engineering Thesis Project

Time is one of the most intriguing physical quantities, in the implications of its definition and for the skills required in its measurement. Presently, there are more than 24 atomic clocks orbiting the Earth. Six or more of these clocks are always in line of sight at all times. Thus a modern global positioning system (GPS) module can generate an extremely precise time scale. These GPS receivers process the signals from four or more satellites, and every second they compute latitude, longitude and altitude. To make this computation, the receiver must calculate the current time with high accuracy. At the same time, the receiver output a timing pulse once every second, which is derived from the orbiting atomic clocks and is accurate to a few tenths of a nanosecond (ns).

The aim of the thesis is to design a PCI bus compatible unit that will capture the highly precise and synchronous 1 pulse-per-second (PPS) signal from the Motorola GPS module. This is done via the technique of acquiring accurate GPS timing pulse. The output of the card is a TTL signal that will trigger a high-speed camera at rates between 25 and 1000 frames per second.

In a particular imaging scenario, a number of high-speed video cameras are distributed widely but on a common scene. Each camera is connected to a PC and integrated with the GPS/PCI timing signal generator card. All the digital cameras will be recording the frames instantly and at precisely the same time.

Poster Presentation (PDF)

Thesis Document (PDF)