Inside the DM24
7.2.2 Leap-seconds
GPS time does not include leap-seconds so the firmware in the GPS receiver
performs corrections to account for the difference between GPS time and UTC. This
difference is the sum of all of the leap-seconds which have occurred since the GPS
epoch (January 6
th
, 1980) and, at the time of writing, UTC leads GPS time by 17
seconds.
The current value of the offset and the date of the next leap-second (if known) are
regularly transmitted by the GPS space vehicles to the receivers. When a leap-
second occurs, the receiver announces the time 23:59:60 as the extra second between
23:59:59 and 00:00:00.
If the DM24 sees this time, it recognises the leap-second and all data will be time-
stamped appropriately. If for any reason, the digitiser does not receive this time - the
system may, for example, be configured for GPS power-cycling and the receiver may
be powered down - the digitiser will produce data with incorrect time-stamps until it
can resynchronise to the GPS receiver again. If the digitiser is notified in advance
about an upcoming leap-second, this situation can be avoided and the leap-second
will be handled correctly even if GPS data are unavailable at the time. Güralp's
newest GPS receivers - those based on the PAM7Q chip-set - will automatically
notify the DM24 of upcoming leap-seconds but older receivers cannot do this.
You can manually notify a DM24 of an upcoming leap-second from the command
line using the
LEAPSECOND
command - see section 6.4.7 on page 62 for full details.
This can be done at any time between the official announcement and the actual leap-
second.
Upcoming leap-seconds are announced by the International Earth Rotation Service
(https://www.iers.org) in their Bulletin C, to which anyone can subscribe, and also on
the Güralp web-site in the Frequently-Asked Questions (Support FAQs) section.
→
7.2.3 Week-number roll-over
Although the GPS system can be used to determine the date and time with extreme
accuracy, the GPS satellite constellation does not actually transmit the full date to
GPS receivers. Instead, a ten-bit value called "Week Number" is transmitted every
thirty seconds, as part of each subframe of the "Navigation Message". It is the
responsibility of the receiver to calculate the date from this value. (The time within
the week is transmitted as the number of seconds since midnight on
Saturday/Sunday.)
GPS week zero started at the beginning of 00:00:00 UTC on January the 6
th
, 1980. A
ten-bit field can only hold 1024 different values so this system was never going to
last forever. Indeed, week 1023 was first reached on August the 15
th
, 1999. The
following week, the GPS satellites populated the Week Number field with a value of
100
Issue U - December, 2021