IRIG Time Code and IRIG B

What is IRIG Time Code?

In 1956 the standardization of the different time code formats was mandated for the American Inter Range Instrumentation Group (IRIG). There are six variations of IRIG Time Code: IRIG A, IRIG B, IRIG D, IRIG E, IRIG G, and IRIG H. Of the six versions of IRIG Time Code, IRIG B is the most commonly used format for time and frequency solutions.

The following table contains standard code formats defined in IRIG standard 200-98:

What is IRIG-B?
The IRIG-B standard consists of a family of rate scaled serial time codes with formats containing up to three coded expressions or words. The IRIG-B pulse code contains one “frame” of 100 “elements” per second for the time of the year and GPS receiver status. IRIG-B encodes the day of year, hour, minute, and second data on a 1 kHz carrier frequency, with an update rate of once per second.

Why IRIG-B?
The need for IRIG standards such as IRIG-B is that standardization of time codes allows equipment to be synchronized to a known reference time. This also allows facilities at geographically locations in different locations around the world to synchronize to a known time code source. In practice, many labs are equipped with devices that create IRIG time code from GPS Satellite time and distribute time code to other devices for synchronization.

IRIG-B uses
IRIG B is used in many modern day electronic systems such as communication systems, data handling systems, missile and spacecraft tracking, and telemetry systems that require time-of-day information for data correlation with time.

Brandywine Products with IRIG B

Most of Brandywine’s products use IRIG B or other IRIG options as a standard time code format.  From our Bus Level Products such as our PCI and VME cards to our HPTS (High Performance Timing System) which is a dual redundant ruggedized Master Clock, Brandywine has a solution to your timing needs. Please look at our full line of products to see what we have to offer.