The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) and the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR)-National Physical laboratory (NPL) have signed an agreement for the development of Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC)-based Indian standard time (IST) traceable primary reference time clock (PRTC) for the telecom sector.
The agreement is signed under the Telecom Technology Development Fund (TTDF) scheme of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for providing funding support to domestic companies and institutions involved in technology design, development, commercialisation of telecommunication products and solutions to enable affordable broadband and mobile services in rural and remote areas.
The project focuses on the development of a device which shall provide direct IST traceability to all the telecom service providers (TSPs) and internet service providers (ISPs) within ± 20 ns. This shall benefit India in multiple ways starting from reducing the dependency on GPS, shifting to Indian regional navigation satellite system (IRNSS)/NavIC, digital forensic analysis of transactions, cyber secure networks, reduce call drops & further synchronise all the telecom services with one reference time source IST, developed by CSIR-NPL.
Time synchronisation of the telecom networks will be foundation for a strong cyber secured nation, as every bank transaction, stock market transactions and exchange of information is through the TSPs and ISPs. Development of NavIC based IST traceable primary reference time clock (PRTC) is an initiative which aims towards achieving the objective of “One nation One time”.
Commenting on the collaboration, Dr. Rajkumar Upadhyay, chief executive officer (CEO), C-DOT underscored the tremendous potential of Indian research and development in developing futuristic innovative solutions for the benefit of our nation’s prosperity and improving the quality of life. He emphasised the need to collaborate in other areas of joint interest for realising the vision of “Atmanirbhar Bharat”.
The event was also attended by Dr. Ashish Agarwal and Dr. K. K. Maurya, senior principal scientists along with other senior scientists of NPL. Dr. Pankaj Kumar Dalela, Ms. Shikha Srivastava- directors of C-DOT were also present during the agreement signing ceremony.
Both C-DOT and CSIR-NPL expressed their enthusiasm and reiterated their firm commitments towards taking this engagement further with a resounding success.
