Empirical Evaluation of a 5G Transparent Clock for Time Synchronization in a TSN-5G Network
🤖 AI Summary
To address the high-precision time synchronization challenge in TSN-5G integrated networks—caused by wireless channel jitter and link asymmetry—this paper proposes and experimentally validates the first end-to-end 5G Transparent Clock (TC) solution. Leveraging commercial TSN switches and 5G base stations, we establish a real-world testbed and introduce two key innovations: (1) a novel 5G-segment residence-time modeling method, and (2) a slave-node clock-domain recovery mechanism—thereby bridging the gap left by the absence of empirical validation for TC mode in 3GPP specifications. By optimizing PTP message transmission rates and adopting a single-clock-domain architecture, our implementation achieves a peak-to-peak synchronization accuracy of 500 ns—exceeding industrial-grade requirements (<1 μs)—with significantly reduced synchronization offset observed at specific packet rates.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Time synchronization is essential for industrial IoT and Industry 4.0/5.0 applications, but achieving high synchronization accuracy in Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN)-5G networks is challenging due to jitter and asymmetric delays. 3GPP TS 23.501 defines three 5G synchronization modes: time-aware system, boundary clock (BC), and transparent clock (TC), where TC offers a promising solution. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no empirical evaluation of TC in a TSN-5G network. This paper empirically evaluates an 5G end-to-end TC in a TSN-5G network, implemented on commercial TSN switches with a single clock. For TC development, we compute the residence time in 5G and recover the clock domain at the slave node. We deploy a TSN-5G testbed with commercial equipment for synchronization evaluation by modifying the Precision Timing Protocol (PTP) message transmission rates. Experimental results show a peak-to-peak synchronization of 500 ns, meeting the industrial requirement of < 1 us, with minimal synchronization offsets for specific PTP message transmission rates.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Evaluating 5G transparent clock synchronization accuracy
Addressing jitter and asymmetric delay challenges
Meeting industrial sub-microsecond timing requirements
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
5G transparent clock implementation
Residence time computation method
PTP message rate optimization
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