Resilient Clock Synchronization Architecture for Industrial Time-Sensitive Networking

TL;DR

This paper introduces a temperature-resilient clock synchronization architecture for TSN that adapts to delay asymmetry and thermal variations, improving timing accuracy in industrial environments.

Contribution

It proposes TACD, a novel architecture with Bayesian delay adaptation and temperature-aware skew estimation, enhancing synchronization robustness under environmental changes.

Findings

Achieves higher synchronization accuracy under thermal and delay variations.

Demonstrates effectiveness with measured delay data.

Proves optimality of skew estimation through theoretical bounds.

Abstract

Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is a promising industrial Internet of Things technology. Clock synchronization provides unified time reference, which is critical to the deterministic communication of TSN. However, changes in internal network status and external work environments of devices both degrade practical synchronization performance. This paper proposes a temperature-resilient architecture considering delay asymmetry (TACD) to enhance the timing accuracy under the impacts of internal delay and external thermal changes. In TACD, an anti-delay-asymmetry method is developed, which employs a partial variational Bayesian algorithm to promote adaptability to non-stationary delay variation. An optimized skew estimator is further proposed, fusing the temperature skew model for ambiance perception with the traditional linear clock model to compensate for nonlinear error caused by temperature changes. Theoretical derivation of skew estimation lower bound proves the promotion of optimal accuracy after the fusion of clock models. Evaluations based on measured delay data demonstrate accuracy advantages regardless of internal or external influences.