Recipient organisationLancaster UniversitySource-published name: Lancaster University
Funding£112K
PeriodMar 2025 — Mar 2027
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
The UK’s satellite-based timing signals—which keep mobile networks, financial markets, and the electricity grid synchronised to within microseconds—are vulnerable to jamming, spoofing, and solar storms, and this project aims to build a backup atomic clock small and rugged enough to fit inside everyday devices. Today, critical infrastructure relies on GPS and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) for precise timekeeping. If those signals are disrupted—whether by a deliberate attack, space weather, or satellite loss—phone networks can fail, power grids can desynchronise, and financial transactions can go wrong. A 2018 UK government review identified this as a strategic vulnerability, and the risk has grown since the war in Ukraine, where jamming has become routine. The team has already built a working benchtop atomic clock using endohedral fullerenes—molecules that behave like trapped atoms but without the need for vapour or complex optics. During this project, they will shrink that design into a precommercial prototype and test it under real-world conditions. If successful, the clock could be integrated into GNSS receivers to provide holdover timing during outages, and eventually be miniaturised further for use in consumer electronics and the Internet of Things.
View original technical description
Precise and reliable timekeeping is essential to the infrastructure on which modern society depends. Mobile phone signals, financial markets, radio broadcasting, radar, and the electricity grid all need precise synchronisation (often with a precision of microseconds or better) between different elements of the network. This synchronisation is presently achieved via signals from global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) such as the GPS network. However, these signals are vulnerable to space weather, to jamming, spoofing (false signal), and meaconing (delaying and rebroadcasting), or potentially even from satellites being shot down. This is a key strategic vulnerability for the UK, as recognised by a Blackett Review in 2018\. At the time, the main risks were accidental jamming and solar storms; however, since the invasion of Ukraine, deliberate jamming has become widespread both within and outside the war zone, with a clear risk that it could be deployed against the UK. The way to mitigate this vulnerability is to equip GNSS-diciplined clocks with a holdover capability, by incorporating clocks that will keep them synchronised through a prolonged outage. These clocks must be extremely accurate (at the level of microseconds over a week), but also rugged and stable enough to be deployed across a wide range of applications, wherever there is a requirement for low size, weight, power, and cost. The aim of this project is to develop a new type of atomic clock that will meet this need. The clock is based on endohedral fullerenes, which are molecules that have many of the advantages of trapped atoms but -- crucially -- avoid any need for vapours or optics. We have already demonstrated such a clock, working on a benchtop. During this project we will develop a smaller precommercial prototype and test it thoroughly across the full range of environmental conditions it will need to withstand. The result will be a new class of condensed-matter clock, ready to be integrated into GNSS devices and with potential for further miniaturisation, eventually into consumer electronics and the internet things.
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