Fault-Tolerant Clock Synchronisation with Microsecond- Precision for CAN Networked Systems
Dongik Lee, Jeff Allan · 2003
A fault-tolerant clock synchronisation technique is presented. In a distributed system the discrepancy between a node’s view of current time and the rest of a system can cause critical deadlines to be missed. It may also be the cause of many unknown system errors. In fact, many real-time applications, such as redundancy management, synchronous data acquisition and simultaneous triggering of actuators at several nodes, are impossible without such a global reference time. DRTS Ltd have developed and have protected a software-based fault-tolerant clock synchronisation technique for broadcast networks such as CAN. It provides a predictable and reliable service that enables networked system synchronisation to micro-second precision using negligible network bandwidth. 1.