Open-Source Precision, High Accuracy and Security Environment for Time Verification, Calibration, and Interoperability
Open PHASE seeks to enable a broad, open-source, high accuracy timing community, providing access to hardware, common and open calibration processes, continuous integration pipelines, and test services in a neutral environment to foster adoption, advancement, and best practices to deliver performant, multi-vendor heterogeneous solutions that are interoperable and secure.
Open PHASE
Initially funded by NSF POSE Grant No. 2303726, this effort supports the US National Science Foundation (NSF) mission with the Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) by providing resources and expertise to the open-source community involved with precision timing, to ensure their open-source solutions transfer and keep time as intended, can be calibrated and verified to specification and standard requirements, and confirm the security and interoperability of such solutions. Open PHASE builds on UNH-IOL's 36+ years of experience in providing neutral, third-party facilities and solutions to community members to assist in the goal of fostering open source ecosystems with resources to validate the quality of time provided by the community member.
Initial Efforts
The White Rabbit Collaboration
The team supported by the NSF POSE grant is participating with the White Rabbit Collaboration (WRC), whose members include CERN, Nikhef, Fermilab, GMV, IQD, Safran, LMS, Jump Trading and others, in developing and defining verification, calibration, performance and interoperability tests as part of the White Rabbit Collaboration certification push for the Open Source Hardware, Software and Gateware that comprise a White Rabbit (WR) solution.
Infrastructure and Resources
Currently the effort is focused on building up the necessary infrastructure to support the Open PHASE mission. This includes resources for validating the quality of time (eg: Microchip 53100A Phase Noise Analyzer and Time Taggers such as those from Swabian Instruments) as well as controlled environmental chambers for system evaluation as well as Absolute Calibration of O/E PIN diodes as part of the Absolute Calibration of ingress/egress delays of a port, to single digit picosecond (or better) precision. Refer to the IEEE ISPCS 2025 paper "Precision Delay Measurement in Optical and Electrical Transitions: Achieving Picosecond-Level
Uncertainty" building upon the work from the team at Nikhev and others.
LAAS and CI/CD
The effort can currently provide participants with remote access to hosted hardware, networked and connected as needed, with automated verification tests performed periodically, as in a typical CI/CD process, and reported via a credentialed custom dashboard.
This Lab As A Service can be targeted to a specific community member's needs, be it:
- to showcase a solution in an independent and neutral setting
- gain access to specific verification resources
- pursue certification testing for the WRC
- verify interoperability with key devices
- and more!
Get Involved
Please contact us at openphase@iol.unh.edu for more information on how you can participate, contribute, and help shape the ongoing growth of this effort.
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NSF grant funded project to assist with research efforts expanding support for open-source high accuracy timing solutions, such as White Rabbit
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UNH lab acting as a bridge between various open source software and hardware implementations in the precision timing space
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Leading the development of certification testing for implementations of the White Rabbit Project, including absolute timing calibration for WR ports
Resources:
The White Rabbit Collaboration Website
OCP Time Appliance Project (TAP)
IEEE P3335 - Std for Architecture and Interfaces for Time Card
IEEE P1952 - Std for Resilient Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) User Equipment
Collaborate with us to setup a dedicated lab for your organization or open source project by emailing us at os-team@iol.unh.edu to get started.