Re: [gpsd-dev] NMEA time calculation question

[Ed W]

Hi

> My Skytraq Venus 634 and 638 at 1Hz update (with UTC sync enabled) can 
> work this way with a fixed latency  to the start bit of the first 
> sentence  (I think 2mS - it is perfectly consistent on my scope on the 
> TTL line).  I don't know about other chipsets, but most don't even 
> have a way to do this.

Yes, I have a Venus 6 and I believe it's the same.  Rumour is that the 
first bit is of similar jitter to the PPS?  Do you observe that on a scope?


> USB 1.1 has a 1mS jitter minimum since that is the polling interval.  
> USB2.0 can go down to 125uS.

See my previous email - it appears that only USB2 *high* speed goes to 125uS



> I don't know what the goal is, but you would need a hardware pin and 
> some kernel patches if you want a linux or bsd system to sync to sub 
> mS accuracy.

Well, I obviously didn't get my point across.

1) My jitter is slightly higher than expected.  Q: is this related to 
the way GPSD estimates the arrival time of the first $, ie can I make a 
change to the gpsd algorithm which would give me 0.5ms precision on my 
NMEA time (from venus 6 over usb)

2) *IF* not just the initial bit, but in fact if every bit of the Venus 
6 output were of low jitter, then because we collect multiple 
observations of the serial output via USB, then it should be possible to 
improve our estimate of the arrival timestamp below the 0.5ms mark.  ie 
we can observe the number of characters read on each USB timestamp, 
compare with our predicted number of characters we should be able to get 
sub ms estimates of the arrival time of a particular character - use 
that to work back and get the arrival time of the first bit. Note that 
if feasible, this technique would give better accuracy than PPS over USB !


> That said, an Arduino Mega with an Ethernet shield (available at radio 
> shack and globally, just under $100 US, cheaper if you shop) is pure 
> embedded so the PPS can go into an input capture and be tagged with 
> 67nS precision (and measure and compensate for crystal accuracy), so 
> you can create a very accurate clock down to a few microsecnds and 
> there should be enough space to implement SNTP, and at 100Mbps, 
> Ethernet will have far less latency and jitter than USB.

Agreed.  I think the goal here is to see how far one can push USB for 
accuracy?  For the vast majority of uses I think 0.5ms is very decent.  
If we could get that into the few hundred microsec range then we almost 
certainly surpass the average stratum 1.

PPS into a GPIO is the way to go for best accuracy, but don't you find 
it interesting that we might be able to get into the few hundred 
microsecs using only usb?

Cheers

Ed W