Time synchronization system for industrial control network using global reference pulses

摘要

Local clocks used for coordinating events in an industrial control system may be synchronized using time messages transmitted on standard communication networks. A master industrial controller incorporates a time values in a time messages transmitted to the other controllers, the time value indicating the tie of occurrence of an independent global synchronizing pulse. All controllers also capture the local time of the global synchronizing pulse and these times may be compared to the time message from the master industrial controller to deduce a time error value independent of network messaging delays. The error value is used to correct the local clocks.