The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) has substantially improved the quality of its local time scale UTC(PTB), which is the national realization of the international time reference Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). It serves as basis for PTB's time services, for local clock comparisons and for international time comparisons. Since February 2010 UTC(PTB) has been realized using an active hydrogen maser (AHM) steered in frequency via a phase micro stepper according to an algorithm which combines the frequency comparison data between the AHM and primary and commercial caesium clocks of PTB. Thereby the long-term stability and accuracy of PTB's primary clocks, in particular its fountain clock CSF1, were combined with the short-term frequency stability of the AHM. CSF1 data were used to calculate the steering on all days except of 6 days during 15 months. During the time between July 2010 and July 2011, the time difference between UTC(PTB) and UTC was always less than 6 ns and the monthly mean rate differences never exceeded 0.16 ns/day.

Two-way satellite time and frequency transfer (TWSTFT) using geostationary telecommunication satellites is widely used in the timing community today and has also been chosen as the primary means to effect synchronization of elements of the ground segment of the European satellite navigation system Galileo. We investigated the link performance in a multistation network based on operational parameters such as the number of simultaneously transmitting stations, transmit and receive power, and chip rates of the pseudorandom noise modulation of the transmitted signals. Our work revealed that TWSTFT through a "quiet" transponder channel (2 stations transmitting only) leads to a measurement noise, expressed by the 1 pps jitter, reduced by a factor of 1.4 compared with a busy transponder carrying signals of 12 stations. The frequency transfer capability expressed by the Allan deviation is reduced at short averaging times by the same amount. At averaging times of >1 d, no such reduction could be observed, which points to the fact that other noise sources dominate at such averaging times. We also found that higher transmit power increases the carrier-to-noise density ratio at the receive station and thus entails lower jitter but causes interference with other station's signals. In addition, the use of lower chip rates, which could be accommodated by a reduced assigned bandwidth on the satellite transponder, is not recommended. The 1 pps jitter would go up by a factor of 2.5 when going from 2.5 MCh/s to 1 MCh/s. The 2 Galileo precise timing facilities (PTFs) can be included in the currently operated network of 12 stations in Europe and all requirements on the TWSTFT performance can be met, provided that suitable ground equipment will be installed in the Galileo ground segment.

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Laboratory sources for standard frequency and time that receive external time signals to control their built-in oscillators are widely used wherever accurate and stable frequency and time, optionally with universal synchronization, are required. We propose a method to obtain traceability of such signals to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and particularly to UTC(PTB), its realization by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). The role of PTB's weekly published Time Service Bulletin is discussed in detail, and the metrological steps for establishing and maintaining traceability are described and uncertainty contributions are stated. Furthermore, we discuss how to possibly meet financial sector regulations according to European MiFID II. A procedure as a component for the assessment to provide accurate time through telecommunication networks using, eg, the Network Time Protocol (NTP) is presented. It checks outputs of an NTP server to validate that its time reference and provided timeof-day information is in accordance with specific requirements.

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