Extending Reference Broadcast Infrastructure Synchronization Protocol in IEEE 802.11 as Enabler for the IIoT

TL;DR

This paper proposes an extension to the Reference Broadcast Infrastructure Synchronization protocol in IEEE 802.11 networks, enabling accurate time synchronization crucial for industrial IoT applications, validated through real-world testing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel synchronization approach tailored for IEEE 802.11, integrating IEEE 802.1AS standards, and demonstrates its effectiveness in industrial scenarios.

Findings

Achieves synchronization accuracy suitable for industrial IoT use cases.

Validated with commercial hardware in a realistic automation environment.

Enables seamless integration into existing industrial wireless solutions.

Abstract

Realizing the industrial Internet of Things, more andmore mobile use cases will emerge in the industrial landscape,requiring both novel concepts and smooth integration into legacydeployments.Since accurate time synchronization is particularly challengingfor wireless devices, we propose a concept for simple but accuratesynchronization in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network thatextends the Reference Broadcast Infrastructure Synchronizationprotocol, and a suitable integration of IEEE 802.1AS that is partof the IEEE time-sensitive networking standards. In addition,the concept is evaluated with a testbed using commercial off-the-shelf hardware and a realistic discrete automation demonstratorequipped mostly with industrial components. By using the afore-mentioned devices for wireless communications, this concept canbe directly applied in existing industrial solutions, thus achievingthe proposed results. It is shown that the achieved synchronicity issuitable for a wide range of mandatory mobile use cases, which aremost important for a fully functional industrial Internet of Things.