Design considerations for hardware implementation of nanoseconds time synchronization low-cost system based on precise time protocol

Precise time synchronization is the key for coordinating every node of the distributed system to complete tasks. The widespread use of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) in distributed nodes has a positive effect on improving time synchronization accuracy. Although the use of FPGA could significantly improve time synchronization accuracy, there is not a universal design guideline. This work has analyzed and summarized three factors that should be considered when building a low-cost clock synchronization system using FPGA: where the timestamp should be generated, the calculation and correction of time offset, and how to handle Precise Time Protocol (PTP) messages. Based on these design considerations, the time synchronization system intellectual property (IP) core was constructed. The synchronization accuracy experiments have been performed on Zynq system-on-chip (SoC) evaluation boards of different architectures. The experimental results demonstrated that the time synchronization system constructed in this article could achieve nanoseconds accuracy.