Synchronization of stand alone measurement instruments by PDA and embedded hardware

In the paper is proposed an eXtended Hardware Interfaces (XHI) designed to synchronize stand alone Measurement Instruments (MIs), not connected to Distributed Measurement System. The XHI is based on the conjunct use of Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and Embedded Synchronizing Hardware (ESH) This solution merges the advantages of the PDA as concerning with the easy and flexible setting up of measurement procedure on MI, and the ones of the ESH as concerning with the achievable synchronization accuracy of order of sub-μs, comparable to that guaranteed by the standard IEEE 1588-v1. Experimental tests validate the performances of the proposed XHI.