Company Profile
TimeTech GmbH has been incorporated in Stuttgart in 1990. The company was set up to provide industry results and information gained by the company owners during many years of research and development study at the Universities of Berlin and Stuttgart
The company's activities can be roughly divided into two areas: 'space activities' and 'development, production of test and measurement equipment in the area of time and frequency'.
The development, production of test and measurement equipment is mainly focused on systems for time and frequency transfer. In the ground station section our company has developed and manufactured complete time and frequency systems, e.g. for ESA's deep space antenna facility DSA1 in New Norcia (Western Australia), DSA2 in Cebreros (Spain), and DSA3 in Malargüe (Argentina), where ultra-stable time and frequency signals (below 1 ps/K) are generated from the outputs of 2 active H-Masers (type ON).
Our product range covers products for Frequency Generation and Monitoring, like Phase Comparators and Reference Generators; Frequency and Pulse Distribution, Two-Way-Time Transfer (TWSTFT), Space Products, e.g. the Ultra-Stable Oscillator for the VeRa mission, and turnkey Time and Frequency Systems. Furthermore, TimeTech GmbH has manufactured and operates complete stations, like the PRARE master station (PRARE: Precise Range and Range-Rate Equipment).
TimeTech GmbH is the sole European manufacturer of Two-Way Satellite Time and Frequency Transfer modems (SATRE TWSTFT), used by several European, North-American and Asian Standard Institutes to compare high accuracy clocks. Our product range covers complete ground stations based on C-Band or Ku-band with VSAT hardware, where the operation of the complete station is controlled via the SATRE modem’s interface. Other applications are satellite orbit determination and network synchronisation.
A number of various Bit-Error-Rate Test Receivers have been developed and manufactured by TimeTech for MSG, METOP, CryoSAT. The receivers are used for Bit-Error-Rate measurements of the satellite RF-link and are integrated into the RF-SCOE (Special Check Out Equipment) of the satellite manufacturers. A flexible, programmable satellite signal simulator has been developed to verify the receiver performance.
Over the last years TimeTech has led 3 studies showing the feasibility of new technological means to comply with future demanding requirements in the fields of fundamental research mission support, Earth science mission support, and satellite based high performance metrological time and frequency transfer for the next 30 … 50 years.
For high-performance radio science an ultra stable oscillator (USO) was manufactured, tested and launched with Rosetta spacecraft. This experiment was adopted and modified for VeRa (VeRa Venus Orbiter) USO. The flight spare has been refurbished for this purpose. Each of the projects comprises extensive test campaigns for which high performance hardware and software are manufactured.