CRYPTIK

CRYPTIK

Position and atomic time, onboard.
Accurate when GPS and ground contact are not.

GET IN TOUCH

// thesis

Every spacecraft must answer two questions: where am I, and what time is it? In orbit, they are the same question. Position error equals the speed of light multiplied by timing error. One nanosecond lost is thirty centimetres of uncertainty gained.

Today, that certainty is rented from GNSS. The signal travels thousands of kilometres to arrive weak, easy to jam, easy to imitate, and unavailable beyond the constellation. When it disappears, the spacecraft is left with its clock. The clock is the weakest link.

Microwave atomic clocks cannot escape their physics. Their carrier frequency limits line quality. Adding more clocks improves stability only by the square root of their number, while size, mass, and power grow with every unit. That is a wall.

CRYPTIK moves the reference from microwave to optical. A warm rubidium vapour cell locks to a 385 THz carrier with line quality near 10⁹. A Kerr microcomb divides that stability into an electronic timing signal. No laser cooling. No lattice. No large cavity. The wall becomes a ramp.

A precise clock is necessary, but it is not navigation. OrbitAI turns precise time into precise state onboard, while drift correction carries the solution through denied signals and lost ground contact. Timing is the foundation. Autonomous navigation is the system.

CRYPTIK leads the move from borrowed navigation to sovereign position and time.

[ OPTICAL CLOCK ]

A warm rubidium optical reference converts an atomic transition into a stable electronic timing output. The numbers that define the clock.

[ CLOCK FREQUENCY ]

385 THz778 nm optical carrierRoughly 56,000× above a 6.8 GHz microwave reference, creating the line-quality advantage.

[ READOUT ]

420 nmfluorescenceMicro-PMT detection forms the error signal that closes the AOM feedback lock.

[ TARGET STABILITY (MVP) ]

1.7 × 10⁻¹³at τ = 4000 sAbout 0.68 ns of time error, or roughly 20 cm of range uncertainty, after 4,000 seconds without GNSS.

[ ROADMAP STABILITY ]

~1 × 10⁻¹⁴roadmap targetWith active light-shift compensation and a thermorefractive-noise-optimised resonator.

[ ATOM ]

Rb-87warm vapour cellDoppler-free 5S₁/₂ to 5D₅/₂ two-photon transition. No laser cooling, lattice, or large optical cavity.

[ HOLDOVER ]

~60×less drift0.68 ns over 4000 s versus roughly 40 ns for a chip-scale microwave atomic clock (CSAC).

// 02

[ PHOTONIC CHIP ]

A silicon nitride Kerr-soliton comb divides the optical carrier down to an electronic timing signal. Five numbers define the chip.

[ PLATFORM ]

1550 nmsilicon nitrideIntegrated Kerr-soliton comb for optical frequency division.

[ LOADED Q ]

1.9 × 10⁶loadedIntrinsic Q of 3.8 × 10⁶.

[ COMB ]

200 GHzFSR soliton microcombAnomalous-dispersion engineered.

[ FUNDAMENTAL FLOOR ]

TRN-limitedvalidated modelThermorefractive-noise limited.

[ STATUS ]

Tape-out readyMPWFull-vector validated · DRC-clean · MPW tape-out ready.
[ 01 ]DENIED NAVIGATION

DEFENSE

Position and timing stay onboard through contested signals, high dynamics, and loss of ground contact.

[ 02 ]SOVEREIGN TIME

PNT

A navigation constellation should not need another constellation for permission to know where it is.

[ 03 ]NETWORK SYNC

TELECOM

Atomic holdover keeps critical networks synchronized through interference, outages, and external reference loss.