IEEE-1588 TM STANDARD FOR A PRECISION CLOCK SYNCHRONIZATION PROTOCOL FOR NETWORKED MEASUREMENT AND CONTROL SYSTEMS

Temporal relationships have always been an important element in the measurement and control of industrial physical systems. In small closed systems time is usually implicit in the operation of electronic circuits or in the execution patterns of computer programs. As these industrial systems become more complex with sensors, actuators, and computers distributed in space and communicating via networks, the explicit representation of time is often necessary for robust implementations. The temporal and other implementation requirements on industrial systems differ considerably from those found in typical office distributed computing environments. IEEE-1588-2002, ‘Standard for a Precision Clock Synchronization Protocol for Networked Measurement and Control Systems’ was designed to serve the clock synchronization needs of industrial systems.