An application framework for the IEEE 1588 standard

This paper introduces an application framework for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1588 standard. This application framework, developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), consists of five layers: hardware layer, operating system layer, middleware and tools layer, IEEE 1588 layer, and application layer. A prototype application system has been developed based on the established IEEE 1588 application framework using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) tool. A case study of the IEEE 1588 Delay Request-Response mechanism based on the application framework is presented. The object-oriented application framework can ease integration and simplify the development of new IEEE 1588 applications by reducing the amount of time and errors to design and develop the IEEE 1588 standard infrastructure. Another benefit of this application framework is to enable developers to achieve standards compliance more readily.