White Rabbit Technology Evaluation for the SPD Experiment

The high accuracy profile of the IEEE1588-2019 and its open-source implementation known as White Rabbit provide a standard technology for sub-nanosecond synchronization. The Spin Physics Detector experiment will rely on White Rabbit to perform triggerless data acquisition and event reconstruction. An overview of reports on White Rabbit accuracy and precision performance, including effects of temperature variation, shows the need for experimental evaluation of White Rabbit technology in specific test setups using particular White Rabbit devices. The presented results include measurements and analysis of a White Rabbit network topology with three cascaded WRS-18A switches and two CuteWR-A7 end nodes from Sync Technology. The results cover synchronization signal skew and relative jitter histogram analysis, the temperature effects of extreme cooling and heating on a switch and an end node, as well as the effects of ambient temperature changes. Obtained results demonstrate that both synchronization signal skew and rms jitter remain within the required limits of sub-nanosecond accuracy and 50 ps precision.