Time synchronization for an asynchronous embedded CAN network on a multi-processor system on chip

Distributed cyber-physical systems cover a wide range of applications such as automotive, avionic or industrial automation. These applications require a global notion of time to fullfill their timing requirements. Multi-processor system on chips (MPSOCs) are an attractive implementation option since they offer several benefits such as parallelism and power efficiency. However, MPSOCs have a Globally Asynchronous Locally Synchronous (GALS) architecture in which different processors are driven by independent clocks. Hence, to obtain a global notion of time on a MPSOC, a clock synchronization solution is required. In this paper we propose a time synchronization technique for a Controller Area Network (CAN) network implemented on an asynchronous MPSOC that offers a trade-off between HW/SW cost and time synchronization performance. We evaluate our method on a FPGA platform and show that it can achieve a minimum accuracy of 860 ns and a precision of minimum 2 μs.