Precise Clock Synchronization in High Performance Wireless Communication for Time Sensitive Networking

In this paper, an enhanced precision time protocol (PTP) to enable precise clock synchronization between the nodes within an industrial wireless sensor network deployed for critical control and automation applications is proposed. As it will be shown, by incorporating clock drift factor, the accuracy of clock offset estimation of conventional PTP scheme can be significantly improved. Furthermore, in order to enhance the application of proposed clock synchronization scheme, typically in non-line-of-sight industrial communication environment, the problem of efficient symbol timing synchronization is also studied, and a simplified, yet efficient, start of the frame detector that enables robust timestamp message decoding during clock synchronization period is also proposed.