Clock Synchronization in Integrated TSN-EtherCAT Networks

Moving towards new technologies, such as Time Sensitive Networking (TSN), in industries should be gradual with a proper integration process instead of replacing the existing ones to make it beneficial in terms of cost and performance. Within this context, this paper identifies the challenges of integrating a legacy EtherCAT network, as a commonly used technology in the automation domain, into a TSN network. We show that clock synchronization plays an essential role when it comes to EtherCAT-TSN network integration with important requirements. We propose a clock synchronization mechanism based on the TSN standards to obtain a precise synchronization among EtherCAT nodes, resulting to an efficient data transmission. Based on a formal verification framework using UPPAAL tool we show that the integrated EtherCAT-TSN network with the proposed clock synchronization mechanism achieves at least 3 times higher synchronization precision compared to not using any synchronization.