The Belgian Optical network for Optical frequency Standards and TimE Dissemination (BOOSTED) project, launched in 2023 thanks to a INFRA funding from BELSPO, aims to make accessible, in a secured way, the signals generated by the atomic clocks operated at the Royal Observatory of Belgium.

Compared to common technique, like NTP (~1ms in accuracy), PTP (~1µs) or GNSS (~30 ns), the new Time service dedicated to the time dissemination aims to reach an accuracy of 1ns. These achievements, made possible by the White Rabbit (WR) technology initially developed at CERN, are relying on optical links. Therefore, these are insensitive to GNSS threats (like spoofing, jamming, ...), supporting the development of resilient infrastructure.

The support of the Frequency service is totally different in its nature. This analog signal, supported by an almost pure sinusoidal, is obtained by the phase stabilisation of an optical carrier. The used laser light is located in the middle of the channel C44 of the ITU grid, corresponding to a frequency 194.4 THz, or a wavelength of 1542.14nm. This technique, already widely use in France within the REFIMEVE infrastructure is so accurate, with a stability transfer of the link reaching 10^-21, that the only limitation is coming from the atomic source itself. This technique, which overcomes by far the GNSS capabilities, is the only one able to deliver the full performances of the last generation of atomic clocks, working no more in the microwave domain, but now in the optical domain.