Tag Archives: David W. Allan

The IEEE Highest Scientific Award – David W Allan

Awards, ,

Davids awardThe IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is the biggest scientific publishing house in the world, and the special issue celebrating the 50th year of the Allan variance came out 4 April 2016 is an awesome issue. They had three guest editors for it along with the regular editor.

All by itself, I felt greatly honored by the nomination letter submitted by the who’s who in international time and frequency to the IEEE, let alone be chosen to receive their highest award in recognition of my work.

On May 10th, 2016, my wife, Edna,  and I  had an amazing experience in Nor’lens (New Orleans). This annual symposium was the 70th providing for the international community the best in atomic-clock and precision timing research results.
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Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Allan Variance

Awards, ,

250px-David_W._Allan,_croppedI just received word of the publication of a “Special Issue on Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Allan Variance.”

On May 10th, I will be received the highest award IEEE gives at an an international meeting (International Frequency Control Symposium) in New Orleans, LA, on the 10th of May for my life-long contributions.  The citation reads, “For seminal work to the UFFC community regarding time determination, time prediction, time dissemination and timekeeping through contributions to atomic frequency standards, space-based navigation, time and frequency stability analysis, time-scale algorithms, and timekeeping devices.”
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Everyone Can Understand GPS

Science, ,

Learn How GPS Works in Five Minutes!

Get Ready to Paint a Picture in Your Mind

GPS Satellites Around The Earth
GPS Satellites Around The Earth

Think in your minds eye that you can look up into the sky and see three GPS satellites in very different parts of the heavens.  Think further that you have three looooooooooooooong measuring sticks that are able to reach out from you to each of the three satellites, so that you have a way of measuring the distance to each of them.

The picture you have is an upside down tripod with you at the focal point, and with each of the three GPS satellites at the end of each stick.  This, of course, is totally absurd in practice, but there is a fascinating way to do the equivalent that is practical using the speed of light as your measuring stick.  If you are traveling in your car at 60 miles per hour (~90 kph), and you travel for an hour, you know the distance you have traveled is 60 miles.

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