Atomic Clock - MSF

Atomic clock devices are expensive peices of equipment mainly confined to national laboratories. However, there are a number of atomic clock references available free to air for computer time synchronisation.

Firstly the MSF radio time signal is synchronised to the UK's National Physics Laboratory and broadcast as a long wave radio signal from Rugby, UK. The radio signal is broadcast as a sequence of 60 pulses, one pulse per second, each pulse constitutes a data bit. A mintes worth of data bits encode the time and date information. The data string is terminated on the minute boundary by a marker to signify the start of a minute.

The MSF radio signal is broadcast from Rugby UK and covers the whole of the British Isles and is available in much of North-Western Europe. The transmission of the MSF radio signal is soon to be moved to Anthorn in Cumbria in April 2007. However, the move should not impact on signal reception.

Galleon Systems NTP Servers and Radio based time servers have MSF reception options.