The uses and limitations of HF standard broadcasts for time and frequency comparison

The most practical methods of using high-frequency (HF) broadcasts for frequency and time comparison are reviewed. Although standard broadcast and receiving equipment has improved vastly throughout the past fifty years, the HF propagation medium is no more stable today than it was a half century ago. Doppler shift resulting from changes in the effective height of the ionosphere typically limits the usable accuracy of received high frequencies to a few parts in 10 to the 7th power. At locations beyond groundwave range of the transmitter, uncertainties in path delay generally restrict the usable accuracy of HF time signals to the order of a millisecond. Signal-averaging techniques are sometimes employed to extract frequency or time signals from a noisy background.