P\'eter V\"olgyesi, Abhishek Dubey, Timothy Krentz, Istv\'an Madari, Mary Metelko, Gabor Karsai
International Symposium on Rapid System Prototyping, RSP 2017, Shortening the Path from Specification to Prototype, October 19-20, 2017, Seoul, South Korea 2017
Time synchronization is critical for distributed embedded systems requiring coordinated actions across multiple nodes, especially in applications with tight timing constraints. This work innovates by providing a complete end-to-end solution for GPS-synchronized time services on low-cost edge devices, enabling microsecond-level accuracy critical for real-time control applications without requiring expensive specialized hardware.
This paper presents time synchronization infrastructure for low-cost fog computing platforms running distributed embedded systems. The work describes hardware and software implementations for achieving accurate time coordination across geographically dispersed edge computing nodes using GPS and PTP-based technologies. The platform supports multiple clock domains with master-slave hierarchies and distributed time synchronization mechanisms.
The implementation achieves sub-microsecond synchronization accuracy across edge computing platforms using BeagleBone Black hardware. The evaluation demonstrates GPS to master-node PHC synchronization within 1 microsecond variance, and master-to-slave PHC synchronization achieving tight sub-microsecond coordination. These results validate the feasibility of accurate time coordination for low-cost fog computing applications.
@inproceedings{Voelgyesi2017,
author = {V{\"{o}}lgyesi, P{\'{e}}ter and Dubey, Abhishek and Krentz, Timothy and Madari, Istv{\'{a}}n and Metelko, Mary and Karsai, Gabor},
booktitle = {International Symposium on Rapid System Prototyping, {RSP} 2017, Shortening the Path from Specification to Prototype, October 19-20, 2017, Seoul, South Korea},
title = {Time synchronization services for low-cost fog computing applications},
year = {2017},
pages = {57--63},
abstract = {This paper presents the time synchronization infrastructure for a low-cost run-time platform and application framework specifically targeting Smart Grid applications. Such distributed applications require the execution of reliable and accurate time-coordinated actions and observations both within islands of deployments and across geographically distant nodes. The time synchronization infrastructure is built on well-established technologies: GPS, NTP, PTP, PPS and Linux with real-time extensions, running on low-cost BeagleBone Black hardware nodes. We describe the architecture, implementation, instrumentation approach, performance results and present an example from the application domain. Also, we discuss an important finding on the effect of the Linux RT_PREEMPT real-time patch on the accuracy of the PPS subsystem and its use for GPS-based time references.},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/rsp/VolgyesiDKMMK17},
category = {selectiveconference},
contribution = {colab},
doi = {10.1145/3130265.3130325},
file = {:Voelgyesi2017-Time_synchronization_services_for_low-cost_fog_computing_applications.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {time synchronization, fog computing, GPS, PTP, distributed systems, edge computing, real-time systems, microsecond accuracy},
project = {cps-middleware,cps-reliability},
tag = {platform,decentralization},
timestamp = {Tue, 06 Nov 2018 11:07:11 +0100},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3130265.3130325}
}