GPS Week 1024 and Year 2000 Compliance
Because several other manufacturers have recently reported problems with GPS week 1024 and/or Year 2000 compliance, we have gotten numerous requests for information on this subject.
All Arbiter Systems products are fully compliant with both GPS Week 1024 rollover and Year 2000 requirements (includes recognizing Year 2000 as a leap year), and have been so since the date of manufacture. No action needs to be taken by the user to ensure compliance.
The year is stored internally in our products in full-precision format, capable of fully representing years both before and after Year 2000, and greatly exceeding the expected lifetime of our products. GPS week rollover is handled automatically, and time will continue to proceed forward when the GPS week 1024 rollover happens. Even if the GPS clock is turned off and back on, no action is likely to be required because the date of last operation is stored internally in non-volatile memory. Time is assumed to have proceeded in the forward direction at power-on, so unless the unit is left off for a period of almost 20 years, when it is again locked to GPS, time will be correct.
In the improbable event that a unit is left off for a long enough time that the 1024-week ambiguity is not successfully resolved by this method, then the remedy is simple and requires no modification to the unit: Turn the unit off, and then back on after a minute or two, then (before GPS lock is obtained) the correct date and approximate time may be entered via the RS-232 interface with the 'TS' command. Then, the unit is allowed to lock to GPS and time will be determined correctly from that point forward.
In the event that firmware updates might someday be necessary or desirable, you should know that Arbiter Systems provides free firmware updates for the life of our products. This, along with our MTBF in excess of 1,000,000 hours and our standard 5-year warranty on all GPS timing products, assures you the lowest possible cost of ownership.