IEEE 1588-based Synchronization System for a Displacement Sensor Network

This paper deals with a displacement sensor network that is built over Ethernet and synchronized according to IEEE1588. Actually, distribution of precise time reference in an Ethernet network allows implementations of distributed measurement systems, overcoming limitations of complex architecture. The application of the well known IEEE1588 lets sensors to share the same time reference and, in the case of displacement measures, enables accurate calculation of cross-derived quantities (multidimensional speed and acceleration). In this work a description of the sensor architecture is given and the attention is focused on the IEEE1588 implementation. In particular the proposed low-cost system does not use any dedicated synchronization hardware but it can reduce the deviation from time reference down to 20 mus