A scientific and technological paradigm change is taking place, concerning the way that very high performance time and frequency reference signals are distributed, moving from radio signal broadcasting to signal transport over optical fibre networks. The latter technology demonstrates performance improvements by orders of magnitude, over distances up to continental scale. Research infrastructures are developing several related technologies, adapted to specific projects and applications. The present project aims to prepare the transfer of this new generation of technology to industry and to strengthen the coordination between research infrastructures and the research and education telecommunication networks, in order to prepare the deployment of this technology to create a sustainable, pan-European network, providing high-performance "clock" services to European research infrastructures. Further this core network will be designed to be compatible with a global European vision of time and frequency distribution over telecommunication networks, enabling it to provide support to a multitude of lower-performance time services, responding to the rapidly growing needs created by developments such as cloud computing, Internet of Things and Industry 4.0. The project aims at partnership building and innovation for high performance time and frequency (clock) services over optical fibre networks and to prepare the implementation of such a European backbone network.

The proposed project aims to establish a pan-European time and frequency reference system as a European Research Infrastructure to serve the European science community. It is based on transmitting ultra precise time and frequency information via optical fiber. The proposed project builds on several joint European projects and its direct precursor project CLONETS. We now go far beyond previous efforts by designing a sustainable, pan-European, ultra-precise time-and-frequency reference-system available to the European research community. This Research Infrastructure considers user needs, designs the required architecture, engineering models and roadmaps, and develops a sustainability model for the future service, thus strengthening the European research area. The specific objectives of this project are as follows: 1 Elaborating the needs of the scientific community for ultraprecise timing and frequencies in various fields of research leading to the definition of user requirements the envisaged system has to address in its service at selected points of presence. 2 Defining an architecture that supports this service at the highest, most advanced level of stability and accuracy. 3 Designing an engineering model and strategies to implement a sustainable research infrastructure including the creation of a common data platform. 4 Defining roadmaps and a deployment strategy that assure interoperability of already existing implementations in Europe and possible future extensions. 5 Strengthening the European research area by elaborating plans for the integrations of the necessary environment into the European landscape. In a parallel effort we are planning to list this project in upcoming revisions of the ESFRI roadmap of the EU. This research infrastructure will enable first class research previously not even conceivable, foster the collaboration between time and frequency stakeholders across Europe and will thereby put Europe’s research community into a leading position.