BOULDER, Colo.-The National Institute of Standards and Technology demonstrated a minuscule atomic clock that could one day be incorporated into wireless devices.
NIST said it believes its clock is 100 times smaller than any other atomic clock. Its inner workings are about the size of a grain of rice, consume less than 75 one-thousandth of a watt and are stable to one part in 10 billion, which is equivalent to gaining or losing one second every 300 years. The clock’s tiny size and low power consumption make it a good fit for providing precise timekeeping on portable, battery-powered devices, said NIST.
“The real power of our technique is that we’re able to run the clock on so little electrical power that it could be battery operated and that it’s small enough to be easily incorporated into a cell phone or some other kind of handheld device,” said physicist John Kitching, principal investigator for the atomic clock project. “And nothing else like it even comes close as far as being mass producible.”
According to NIST, chip-scale atomic clocks potentially could be used in wireless devices to improve network synchronization and channel selection to enhance security and anti-jamming capabilities.
