Wireless network

Channel (broadcasting)

Scheduling (production processes)

Computer network

Wireless

Data synchronization

Clock synchronization

Engineering

Embedded system

Wireless sensor network

Operations management

Synchronization (alternating current)

Computer science

Telecommunications

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics

Time-sensitive networking (TSN) is the most promising time-deterministic wired communication approach for industrial applications. To extend TSN to “IEEE 802.11” wireless networks, two challenging problems must be solved: synchronization and scheduling. This article is focused on the first one. Even though a few solutions already meet the required synchronization accuracies, they are built on expensive hardware that is not suited for mass market products. While next Wi-Fi generation might support the required functionalities, this article proposes a novel method that makes high-precision wireless synchronization using commercial low-cost components possible. With the proposed solution, a standard deviation of synchronization error of less than 500 ns can be achieved for many use cases and system loads on both CPU and network. This performance is comparable to modern wired real-time field buses, which makes the developed method a significant contribution for the extension of the TSN protocol to the wireless domain.

A Precise Synchronization Method for Future Wireless TSN Networks