METAS NEW TIME SCALE GENERATION SYSTEM - A PROGRESS REPORT

Up to now, UTC (CH) has been defined as a paper time scale which is computed for a single epoch every day: UTC 00:00. In 2006, we have started to phase in the hardware for a new system, still under development, which should allow us to define UTC (CH) as a real time scale generated by a master clock, i.e. a time scale defined for all epochs. The new system should preserve the advantages of the original system while improving reliability, availability, and compatibility with other UTC (k)'s.