IEEE 802.1AS Precision Time Protocol Full Hardware Prototyping for Industrial IoT

Highly accurate time synchronization is increasingly required in many Industrial IoT devices, including synchronization among mobile base stations for 5G network system, video distribution, factory automation, and automotive in-vehicle networks. IEEE 802.1AS-2020, a profile for industrial and automotive networks that enables network synchronization on the order of microseconds or less, has attracted much attention. This standard, however, is specified with software processing in mind, and makes it difficult to build systems with very high accuracy. This paper presents the performance evaluation of IEEE 802.1AS-2020 using our hardware prototype implemented on Industrial IoT devices. Our proposed hardware method achieves highly accurate time synchronization for precision time protocol with a target of 50 ns and a fluctuation within±20 ns.