Evaluation of clock synchronization accuracy of coexistent Real-Time Ethernet protocols

This paper investigates Real-Time Ethernet (RTE) protocols for industrial applications and their clock synchronization performance. In fact, if different RTE protocols coexist on the same network sharing the same infrastructure, clock synchronization capabilities can be affected. This paper introduces a simulation environment to evaluate coexistence of RTE protocols. The proposed tool is described and validated by comparison with measurement data taken from real networks. Finally, simulation results are presented: the behavior of Ethernet/IP with IEEE1588-PTP, when it is transported over an isochronous PROFINET IO network, is shown and some improvements to the PTP tracking algorithms to ease coexistence are proposed.