13th White Rabbit Workshop and White Rabbit Collaboration Launch - 21-22 March 2024
The 13th WR workshop and the launch event of the WR Collaboration were held at CERN on Thursday 22 March and Friday 23 March 2024. The slides are available here and in the Indico event and the recordings of the presentations can be seen in CERN's Document Server.
Agenda
Thursday 21 March 2024
Time | Title | Speaker(s) | Presentation |
---|---|---|---|
8:30 | Doors Open | ||
8:45 | Welcome to event | Javier Serrano, CERN | presentation |
9:00 | The White Rabbit Collaboration | Amanda Díez, CERN | presentation |
9:15 | Status WR Switch, current v3 | Adam Wujek, Collaboration Bureau | presentation |
9:30 | Status WR Switch, new v4 | Tomasz Włostowski , CERN | presentation |
10:00 | Status WRPC (v5) | Tristan Gingold, CERN | presentation |
10:15 | IEEE and SNIA Standardisation | Maciej Lipiński, CERN | presentation |
10:30 | Coffee Break | ||
10:50 | WR at GSI - Status and near Future | Dietrich Beck, GSI | presentation |
11:10 | EISCAT_3D a White Rabbit based Radar | Simon Brown, EISCAT | presentation |
11:25 | New timing system for the LOFAR2.0 telescope | Roel Witvers, Astron | presentation |
11:45 | Performance evaluation of a versatile and low-jitter WR board designed for radio-telescopes | Daniel Charlet, IJCLAB | presenation |
12:05 | Lunch | ||
13:30 | Light Rabbit: Implementing a White Rabbit node on COTS AMD development boards without relying on external VCXOs | Missing Link Electronics | presentation |
13:55 | Towards Carrier Grade White Rabbit Switch | Marek Brawański, Orange Polska | presentation |
14:20 | Distribution of synchronized time, underline the Green Transition in electrical power production, distribution, and safe operation of the power system. Stanett's project COSECTIME | Statnett | presentation |
14:45 | European Radionavigation Plan and pan-European time distribution | Łukasz K Bonenberg, European Commission | presentation |
15:05 | Coffee Break | ||
15:30 | Quantum Technology Initiative | Sofia Vallecorsa, CERN | presentation |
15:40 | Progressing Towards a Nationwide White Rabbit Network in DWDM Telecommunications for REFIMEVE, France's T/F Network for Education and Research | Paul-Éric Pottie, Syrte | presentation |
16:05 | Sub-ns long-haul dissemination of UTC(CH) using White Rabbit in Switzerland | Antoine Jallageas, METAS | presentation |
16:30 | White Rabbit applications: terrestrial PNT networks, the Quantum Internet, and networked digital time scales | Jeroen Koelemeij, Vrije Universitait Amsterdam | presentation |
16:55 | White Rabbit Time Synchronisation for Quantum Communications | Karolina Schatz, University of York | presentation |
17:20 | Towards Quantum Networking: Characterization of Metropolitan-Scale White Rabbit Precision Time Protocol Architectures | Y. Li-Baboud, NIST | presentation |
18:00 - 19:30 | Optional CERN Guided Tour | ||
20:00 - | Dinner |
Friday 22 March 2024
Time | Title | Speaker(s) | Presentation |
---|---|---|---|
8:30 | Doors open & Welcome Coffee | ||
8:45 | WR Collaboration Inauguration Speech | Rhodri Jones, Head of the Beams Department, CERN | presentation |
9:00 | WR Collaboration Inauguration Speech | Giovanni Anelli, Head of the Knowledge Transfer Group, CERN | presentation |
9:15 | How we got here and what we want to do now | Javier Serrano, WR Collaboration Board Chair, CERN | presentation |
9:35 | WR Collaboration: Plans for the Year Ahead | Maciej Lipiński, WR Collaboration Council Chair, CERN | presentation |
9:55 | Q & A | ||
10:00 | Coffee Break and Group Photo | ||
10:30 | WR Use case: Distributing time for SKA, the largest telescope in the world | Benoît Rat, Safran | presentation |
10:55 | 10 years journey of a cute white rabbit: brief history of CUTE WR node and the applications | Guanghua Gong, SyncTechnology | presentation |
11:20 | QWRTY: A White Rabbit Switch v4 with Enhanced Holdover Capabilities | Ricardo Píriz, GMV | presentation |
11:45 | Adding holdover capability to the WRS v4 | Nick Amey, IQD Frequency Products | presentation |
12:10 | Lunch | ||
14:00 | WR at the InterOperability Laborabory: OpenPhase | Bob Noseworthy, UNH InterOperability Laboratory | presentation |
14:25 | Status of WR related work at Nikhef | Peter Jansweijer, Nikhef | presentation |
14:50 | WR at CERN | Evangelia Gousiou, CERN | presentation |
15:15 | Coffee Break | ||
15:45 | Precision Time in Financial Services | Seth Friedman, LMS | presentation |
16:10 | White Rabbit use cases and challenges in trading | Bence Szikora, Jump Trading | presentation |
16:35 | The White Rabbit Story at Deutsche Börse | Georg Sauthoff, Deutsche Börse | presentation |
17:00 | Corundum NIC and WR | Alex Forencich, UC San Diego | presentation |
17:15 | Packet Switch Project | Carlos Megías Núñez, University of Granada | presentation |
17:35 | Closing Remarks | CERN | |
18:00 | Event End |
Talks
Talks by White Rabbit Collaboration Members:
CERN
GMV
Liquid Markets Solutions
Status of WR related work at Nikhef
Peter Jansweijer, Nikhef
Nikhef is proud to be one of the founding members of the White Rabbit collaboration. Our institute is working on many WR related items such as WR in KM3NeT, Low-phase noise WR in Gravitational Wave Observatories and standardization of WR absolute calibration. This presentation will also focus on BabyWR status and measurement results.
WR Use case: Distributing time for SKA, the largest telescope in the world.
Benoît Rat, Safran
The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is a groundbreaking radio telescope project that will span Australia and South Africa. The SKA will be the largest telescope in the world, covering a total collecting area of one square kilometer with multiple radio antennas distributed over several hundred kilometers. This advanced instrument will be a crucial tool for observing the universe in radio waves and unlocking new discoveries in astronomy and space exploration. In this contribution, we will discuss the application of White-Rabbit time transfer technology for PPS signal distribution on the SKA network. This timing technology was already selected during the SKA design thanks to its high performance and its strong adoption on many other scientific facilities and now it is ready to be deployed during the SKA construction. Nevertheless, the goal is still quite complex and requires deep understanding of the technology to achieve a PPS accuracy of 1.5ns between any two antennas under worst-case scenarios. We will explore the methods for mitigating key challenges, including addressing the harsh environmental conditions at the two SKA sites, such as large temperature variation ranges and distances up to 160 km from the central location. We will detail the time error budget of the different components, required to address the right deployment of a network composed of 36 nodes for Australia (SKA LOW) AND 197 for South Africa (SKA MID). Finally, we will demonstrate some additional use case for the utilization of WR devices for low phase-noise frequency dissemination as another application of this technology. Overall, the presentation will describe the design of a White-Rabbit timing network with exceptional precision, resilience, and availability for one of the most timing-demanding distributed scientific facilities in the world.
10 years journey of a cute white rabbit: brief history of CUTE WR node and the applications
Guanghua Gong, SyncTechnology
Earlier since 2011, the still developing White Rabbit has been choosen as the timing solution for LHAASO experiment, and a mezzanine based WR interface with detector electronics was proposed. The idea brings the birth of Compact Universial Timing Endpoint for White Rabbit (CUTE-WR), a self-contained FMC card to work as a standalone WR node. The first CUTE-WR was used to study the temperature effect or WR link and also in the prototype of LHAASO experiment, hence several generation of CUTE series has been developed include dual-port version to support cascade topology and upgrade to new Artix FPGA. This presentation will give a short introduction to the series of Cute-WR mezzanines and several applications from plateau, underground tunnel to deep sea.
InterOperability Laboratory,University of New Hampshire
Other talks:
Towards Quantum Networking: Characterization of Metropolitan-Scale White Rabbit Precision Time Protocol Architectures
Y. Li-Baboud, NIST
This talk we will present a study which characterizes the clock synchronization precision achieved between different White Rabbit Precision Time Protocol topologies and includes measurements of temperature effect on wavelength dispersion and polarization stability based on optical power for a fiber link pair comprised of both aerial and buried segments. A star topology along with bi-directional simplex and duplex fibers using low-loss Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing were deployed with observed time synchronization precision ranging from sub-200 ps (128 km) to sub-100 ps (64 km).
White Rabbit Time Synchronisation for Quantum Communications
Karolina Schatz, University of York
Quantum communication protocols require the prior sharing of a common time reference in order to successfully distribute entanglement or share secure cryptographic keys. In practice, remote users must be synchronised to sub-nanosecond precision and with guaranteed stability to enable high repetition rates and sufficient temporal filtering. White Rabbit time synchronisation meets these demands and lends itself to a seamless integration with quantum technologies in pre-existing fibre base infrastructure. This talk will discuss some of the work performed at the University of York to integrate White Rabbit with quantum communications. Our experiments explore both short-distance networking scenarios as well as long-distance point-to-point connections, each of which bring their own challenges and opportunities.
Distribution of synchronized time, underline the Green Transition in electrical power production, distribution, and safe operation of the power system. Stanett's project COSECTIME
Stattnet
Our vision for White Rabbit in the telecommunication industry
Marek Brawański, Orange Polska
European Radionavigation Plan and pan-European time distribution
Łukasz K Bonenberg, Joint Research Council, European Commission
Progressing Towards a National-Scale Wide White Rabbit Network in DWDM Telecommunications for REFIMEVE, France's T/F Network for Education and Research
Paul-Éric Pottie, Syrte
Scientific efforts prioritizing improved performance and reliability are fuelling the growing acceptance of fiber-based time and frequency dissemination methods as viable alternatives to GNSS techniques. To ensure national-scale feasibility, it is essential to assess the maturity of deployed technologies in real-world scenarios, guaranteeing both the effectiveness of the new service and its seamless integration into existing active telecommunication networks beyond short-term projects.
In France, significant progress has been made over the past decade in establishing a national network for disseminating optical frequencies alongside active telecommunication networks, through the REFI-MEVE+ research program. This network's advancement, expansion, incorporation of radio-frequency and time transfer capabilities, and engagement of new users are supported financially by the ESR+ project T-REFIMEVE.
As part of the T-REFIMEVE project, our objective is to implement a nationwide long-range White Rabbit (WR) network utilizing xWDM technology in a unidirectional telecommunication architecture. This initiative builds upon our initial investigations conducted on fiber spools employing a cascaded architecture spanning 500 km. To assess the performance of the WR network, we have established remote monitoring capabilities to track round-trip times across the entire deployed network. This paper will discuss the deployment progress of our White Rabbit network across 11 laboratories within a 40 km radius in the Paris area, along with our strategy for monitoring its performance using built-in tools, capitalizing on their exceptional resolution capability. Lastly, we will address our ongoing efforts to reduce the link asymmetry present in xDWDM architectures.
Sub-ns long-haul dissemination of UTC(CH) using White Rabbit in Switzerland
Antoine Jallageas, METAS
METAS, in collaboration with SWITCH, armasuisse and SIX-group, has developed a prototype network to demonstrate that the White Rabbit technology can be used to disseminate the Swiss official time UTC(CH) over a fiber optic network with a very high level of performance. In this presentation, we will describe the topology of this prototype network and present the first experimental results.
White Rabbit applications: terrestrial PNT networks, the Quantum Internet, and networked digital time scales
Jeroen Koelemeij, Vrije Universitait Amsterdam
Potentially disruptive technologies such as decimeter-level positioning via mobile networks and the Quantum Internet require network clock synchronization at the level of about one tenth of a nanosecond. White Rabbit (WR) supports such levels of synchronization, and indeed WR has been used in research towards distributed quantum computing and terrestrial networked positioning systems. In my talk, I will touch upon two recent examples of these WR-enabled developments. In the same context I will also explain the need for redundant WR reference clocks with sub-nanosecond residual time offsets, and how this automatically leads to a time-scale mechanism similar to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), but with additional advantages owing to the high accuracy, digital nature, and low latency of WR networks.
The White Rabbit Story at Deutsche Börse
Georg Sauthoff, Deutsche Börse
In my talk, I present how and for what purposes we are currently using White Rabbit at Deutsche Börse and how we might extend our usage. In short, we have a WR network to synchronize the clocks of our network switches that timestamp each order and market data frame. We use those timestamps for our monitoring and for providing reports to our customers. Co-located customers are also able to connect to our WR network for accessing our time reference. In an outlook segment, I discuss possible future WR use cases at Deutsche Börse, e.g. to also use WR for synchronizing the clocks in our servers or to use WR for measuring the length of cables.
WR at GSI - Status and near Future
Dietrich Beck, GSI
At GSI, the White Rabbit based General Machine Timing System (GMT) is used for routine operation at all three ring machines (SIS18, ESR and CRYRING) as well as all transfer lines since a couple of years. The productive system uses about 50 White Rabbit switches and a couple of hundred nodes.
Within the next year, a control system upgrade of the existing injector requires significant work at the GMT too. The productive White Rabbit network will be extended by adding more than 20 WRS. Additional functionality requires new developments. As the injector is a 50 Hz machine, the rates of messages sent via the White Rabbit network will be significantly higher compared to the ring machines.
Next to the ongoing work at the productive system are developments for FAIR that will be highlighted briefly.
EISCAT_3D a White Rabbit based Radar
Simon Brown, EISCAT
The EISCAT Scientific Association operates high power ionospheric radars on behalf of a global scientific community which uses the data in their research. The research topics are diverse but cover plasma physics, the northern lights and meteors. EISCAT is currently replacing its mainland system with a new radar called EISCAT_3D which relies upon White Rabbit timing. The presentation will give an overview of EISCAT, EISCAT_3D and go into detail on how we use White Rabbit and why.
New timing system for the LOFAR2.0 telescope
Roel Witvers, Astron
LOFAR is currently the largest radio telescope operating at the lowest frequencies that can be observed from earth. It is a distributed telescope with a dense core of stations located in the north of the Netherlands combined with international stations across Europe, creating a virtual telescope the size of Western Europe. LOFAR is currently being upgraded to LOFAR2.0. We present an overview of the validation of the new White Rabbit timing distribution system, showing the improvements in timing stability for the upgraded LOFAR2.0.
Performance evaluation of a versatile and low-jitter WR board designed for radio-telescopes
Daniel Charlet, IJCLAB
Among the wide panel of time and frequency transfer solutions over fiber networks, White Rabbit represents a significant technological by providing a standardized solution while offerings precision and reliability in synchronizing distributed systems, such as telecommunications, finance, and scientific research, paving the way for future innovations built on precise timekeeping. White Rabbit introduces fresh opportunities for networked systems within research infrastructures, offering enhanced capabilities at a reduced operational cost. The drive to enhance White Rabbit (WR) hardware and software stems from the urgent need for ultra-precise timing capabilities and arbitrary in-phase frequency generation, particularly in research fields like radio astronomy, physics detector systems, and accelerator synchronization. For instance in radio astronomy the scientific goal is to synchronize multiple dishes and accurately tagg events for capturing celestial phenomena.. We are also motivated by the expressed needs for physics detector setups, requiring synchronization across multiple detectors and precise time tagging for triggerless systems. Accelerators are also interested by a seamless distribution of master oscillator signals, enhancing overall accelerator efficiency and reliability. Our primary focus for this work lies in developing a radio telescope demonstrator tailored for 3D mapping of the universe's atomic hydrogen distribution. Here we report on our progresses on the development of a high performance low-jitter electronic board based on WR core, so-called IDROGEN. We will report on the evaluation of timing and frequency signals versus the active H-masers operated at SYRTE and show timing stability at 1-ps within 1 day of integration and control of time offset below 10 ps. We will focus on the capability of IDROGEN to rephase accurately RF signals up to 500 MHz. We believe this technology demonstrates great potential for addressing the rigorous demands of high-precision timing applications and could be applied to the link SYRTE to the radio-telescope in Nançay in a near future.
Light Rabbit: Implementing a White Rabbit node on COTS AMD development boards without relying on external VCXOs
Missing Link Electronics