NTC and Innovate UK Competition

Competition round 2 now closed

Supporting and enabling business-led innovation in UK based resilient time, frequency and synchronisation.

Through the National Timing Centre (NTC) programme, NPL is partnering with Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to deploy up to £6.7 million in grant funding for UK innovation in resilient time, frequency and synchronisation (TFS). This provides opportunities for UK businesses and research organisations to collaborate in the development of new products and services. This funding is being provided by the UK Government’s Strategic Priorities Fund.

The first competition round was launched in Spring 2021, titled “Innovation in Time Dissemination and Application.” A £2 million grant budget was deployed to:

• Support and enable business-led innovation across the UK supply chain in resilient TFS for the development of products, services and end user applications
• Develop a TFS ecosystem and capability for relevant industries and critical national infrastructure
• Disrupt and create new markets to improve the provision of TFS

• This first competition resulted in seventeen funded feasibility studies of up to six months in length. The majority of these involve developments that are complementary to GNSS and are intended to contribute to TFS system resilience.

  Projects involve the development of a range of dissemination modes, from terrestrial broadcast, to satellite, to using existing infrastructure. Others involve developments in hardware and time transfer protocols over fibre.

A list of successful projects, together with links to their public information, is found below

Opportunity for more funding

Competition round 2 now closed

Innovation in Time Resilience, Dissemination & Application

Through our National Timing Centre (NTC) programme, we are providing innovation opportunities for UK companies by working with Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, to invest up to £4.7 million in innovation projects that contribute to resilient time, frequency and synchronisation and its dissemination and application.

This competition is for business-led innovation and is open to UK registered organisations as single applicants or collaborations. 

Two types of projects are eligible for funding:

• Feasibility studies with total project costs between £50k and £250k and a maximum duration of 18 months Apply here
• Demonstration projects with total costs between £70k and £1m Apply here