The time of a satellite navigation system is primarily generated by the main control station of the ground system. Consequently, when ground stations fail, there is a risk to the continuous provision of time services to the equipment and users. Furthermore, the anticipated launch of additional satellites will further strain the satellite–ground link. Next-generation satellite navigation systems will rely on time deviation measurements from inter-satellite links to independently establish and maintain a space-based time reference, enhancing the system’s reliability and robustness. The increasing number of low-Earth-orbit satellite navigation constellations provides ample resources for establishing a space-based time reference. However, this also introduces challenges, including extensive time scale computations, increased link noise, and low clock resource utilization. To address these issues, this paper proposes a Distributed Kalman Plus Weight (D-KPW) algorithm, which combines the benefits of Kalman filtering and the weighted average algorithm, balancing the performance with computational resources. Furthermore, an adaptive clock control algorithm, D-KPW (Control), is developed to account for both the short-term and long-term frequency stability of the time reference. The experimental results demonstrate that the frequency stability of the time reference established by the D-KPW (Control) algorithm reaches $7.40\times {10}^{-15}$ and $2.30\times {10}^{-15}$ for sampling intervals of 1000 s and 1,000,000 s, respectively, outperforming traditional algorithms such as ALGOS. The 20-day prediction error of the time reference is 1.55 ns. Compared to traditional algorithms such as AT1, ALGOS, Kalman, and D-KPW, the accuracy improves by 65%, 65%, 66%, and 67%, respectively.

To ensure the long-term stable and uninterrupted service of satellite navigation systems, the robustness and reliability of time–frequency systems are crucial. Integrity monitoring is an effective method to enhance the robustness and reliability of time–frequency systems. Time–frequency signals are fundamental for integrity monitoring, with their time differences and frequency biases serving as essential indicators. These indicators are influenced by the inherent characteristics of the time–frequency signals, as well as the links and equipment they traverse. Meanwhile, existing research primarily focuses on only monitoring the integrity of the time–frequency signals’ output by the atomic clock group, neglecting the integrity monitoring of the time–frequency signals generated and distributed by the time–frequency signal generation and distribution subsystem. This paper introduces a time–frequency signal integrity monitoring algorithm based on the temperature compensation frequency bias combination model. By analyzing the characteristics of time difference measurements, constructing the temperature compensation frequency bias combination model, and extracting and monitoring noise and frequency bias features from the time difference measurements, the algorithm achieves comprehensive time–frequency signal integrity monitoring. Experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm can effectively detect, identify, and alert users to time–frequency signal faults. Additionally, the model and the integrity monitoring parameters developed in this paper exhibit high adaptability, making them directly applicable to the integrity monitoring of time–frequency signals across various links. Compared with traditional monitoring algorithms, the algorithm proposed in this paper greatly improves the effectiveness, adaptability, and real-time performance of time–frequency signal integrity monitoring.

In the optical fiber time transfer system, fiber optic time transfer is limited by the pulse signal time delay measurement precision, and cannot benefit from a higher precision of the carrier phase information. Its transfer precision compared to the frequency transfer exists in a larger gap transfer. This paper proposes a time delay measurement method based on carrier phase and pseudo-code ranging for optical time transfer. The time signal is modulated with pseudo-random code and carrier at the transmitter, and the time delay is measured at the receiver by the methods of pseudo-code ranging and carrier phase measurement. The time transfer is achieved by eliminating the transmission link delay through a two-way method. The first-order difference value of the carrier phase measurement and the pseudo-code ranging measurement are used as the observation quantities, and they are fused through a Kalman filtering method to finally obtain the high-precision time difference measurement. We validate the theory on the common-clock experimental platform over a 50 km fiber link, The time transfer stabilities of the systems are $5.2254\times {10}^{-14}$/s and $2.146\times {10}^{-16}$/${10}^4$ s (modified Allan deviation), $3.0169\times {10}^{-14}$/s and $1.2392\times {10}^{-12}$/${10}^4$ s (time deviation). The standard deviation of the time transfer system after fusion can reach 2.4255 ps.