Ever wonder what exciting tasks are being worked by a software engineer building the next generation GPS system? Well, let me tell you...I have now spent 4 hours trying to resolve a 15 second anomaly in my s-band data time calculation. 15 seconds is so seemingly insignificant, but if I can't figure out the source of these seconds, I can't close on my task.

4 hours spent and I am almost positive the issue is related to leap seconds. Positive! The frustration is that there have been 25 seconds added since the concept of leap seconds was introduced in 1972 in an attempt to synch up the universal time formats. 16 seconds have been introduced since latest epoch (1/6/1980), which is the value I'm expecting for GPS week and time of week in seconds calculations. The most recent leap second was added at the end of June 2012. I am hoping that the time service I am invoking to retrieve leap second information just hasn't been updated for the latest addition.

Such a shame that I find the topic of leap seconds absolutely mind-numbingly dull. Every tidbit of information related to leap seconds and time formats takes 50 times longer to sink in than anything else, so sadly it has taken this long for me to be convinced I'm on the right track to solving my issue with these piddly 15 seconds.

My friends, if you suffer the same boredom as I do regarding this topic, yet you've made it this far in the post, congratulations to you. Bravo! If you want to learn for yourself more about leap seconds and universal time keeping, here are the links that finally helped me understand what might be happening to my seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time
http://adn.agi.com/GNSSWeb/
http://www.csgnetwork.com/gpstimeconv.html

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