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BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

Published on: 2025-08-30 00:31:38

I came to the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show this year with my Dad to learn more about time in broadcast and live production. I was expecting to learn more about grandmaster clocks, AV sync, timing in protocols like Dante, Livewire, AES67, and more—and I have. But then on the first day here I found this odd little corner of the building with a completely empty booth: When you see an oscilloscope that costs 3x the value of your car on a trade show floor... well, let's just say my interest was piqued. I looked at it, and found something interesting—the trigger was on a GPS PPS timing signal output from a u-blox GPS receiver. But the 2nd channel was monitoring KSNV-TV, a US television station broadcasting an ATSC 3.0 signal. The scope showed a PPS output (Pulse Per Second) demonstrating a pulse sync of +/- 10 ns between GPS and the TV signal output—which so happens to be BPS, an experimental timing standard that may be incorporated into the ATSC 3.0 rollout in the US ... Read full article.