Precise Time Synchronization for IoT
Precise time synchronization is emerging as a key enabler for IoT infrastructure (especially for industrial IoT). The way an industrial IoT device adjusts its internal clock in order to align with the clocks of other devices in a network is core to solving many emerging real-time IoT application challenges. Even for challenges that do not directly involve real-time applications, it is important for low-power IoT device operations to have a robust and precise synchronized infrastructure.
Synchronized clocks, for example, can pinpoint the moment when a sensor measurement is going to be shared with the network. Beyond just being able to tell the right time when a sensor reading was taken, and therefore enabling critical analytics upstream (or at the edge computing node), bad sync could have other consequences.If device clocks are out sync, messages may collide with other messages being sent by other devices, or waste energy trying to get back in sync. Clocks drift out of synchronization, especially those using low cost, commodity parts (low power IoT applications usually use off the shelf computing parts that are low cost as well, and therefore this becomes a de-facto choice for such implementations).
To keep networking running efficiently, clocks need to be synchronized in order to make the data flow in a reliable way.
For industrial IoT implementations, not having proper time synchronization implementations could have impactful consequences:
- Power. For most low power IoT technologies bad sync processes may result in increased power consumption owing to missed connections, and retransmits.
- Connection time. Some wireless connections may take longer due to weak synchronization schemes. For mission critical applications where connection times could impact results, a robust and accurate sync method is essential. In such mission critical networks, imprecise sync could render information obsolete, damaging the system’s fidelity. Key examples would be smart city or public safety applications.
- Dense environments. Weak sync schemes are insidious especially for densely-packed endpoint applications. Elegant, flexible and scalable systems are essential for establishing sync with a large fan out to endpoints.
- Indoor location. Increasingly large numbers of industrial and battery-powered IoT applications have to do with locating things. While outdoors GNSS based locating system could be used (even though they tend to be operationally expensive to manage and run), indoor location cannot depend on GNSS. Location depends on precise and fast synchronization with a gateway, preferably using in-band network technologies.
- Time Series Data. Proper analytics for time series data requires precise synchronized time and its distribution to end-points from where such data is collected.
P/SaaS IoT Gateway
Qulsar delivers a full end-to-end precise synchronization system that is fit-for-purpose for multiple Industrial IoT applications. The Qg 2 Gateway system is designed to serve as an edge computing gateway system along with its industry leading slave algorithms. Together they can be used to overcome network packet jitter and variability issues to deliver high precision sync in a scalable, robust way.Qulsar’s mix of P/SaaS and embedded solutions can be deployed in multiple ways at the edge of a network and used as an edge computing platform adaptable for collating and marking time-series data accurately for such applications.
Qulsar solves these problems for emerging applications – contact us if your application needs precise robust timing solutions.
