Incorporating a Cesium fountain frequency standard into a Real-Time Time Scale UTC(k)

The integrity and dependability of reference time scales are increasingly critical across various fields, notably in the realm of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) and essential services requiring synchronized timing. The cesium fountain clock is the most accurate infrastructure for reproducing the time interval unit "second" in the International System of Units (SI). It exhibits almost no frequency drift and has excellent long-term stability in reproducing the standard second length. The cesium fountain clock NTSC-CsF2, along with the clock assembly, is jointly involved in timekeeping. This study focuses on the performance analysis of the cesium fountain clock, the joint time scale algorithm based on the cesium fountain clock, and the frequency steering algorithm aimed at generating a real-time time scale. The final experiment proves that the participation of the fountain clock can improve the performance of the standard time UTC(k).