The Ground Segment of an in-orbit satellite programme consists of different Ground Station Facilities.

The Mission of the Ground Segment is to provide the Telemetry, Telecommand and Control interface, but also send and receive the payload data to the in-orbit satellites.

A precise and ultra-low noise 10MHz frequency reference is necessary for the operation of the RF up/down converters, the baseband equipments and station test tools.

Time synchronization (1PPS, IRIG) is also of importance for the tracking receiver, the antenna control unit and baseband equipments.

Network Time Server is necessary for the Monitoring & Control system of the facility and of the space segment itself, as well as providing orbit data to ground station facilities for antenna pointing.

For this critical application, Unisynce ST-2 “+” provide an excellent cost/performance solution.

A very precise time reference is needed with stringent holdover capabilities to maintain operation even in absence of GNSS service.The Time reference is sourced from GPS, Galileo, Glonass constellations, depending on the programme. A high stability Rubidium ensures for the long-term frequency holdover. 2 Unisynce operate in redundancy to provide reference signals to Frequency and Time distributors, which in turn deliver the time and frequency signals to the different facility’s sub-systems.