Clock synchronization in real-time distributed systems based on FIP field bus

The authors propose a centralized solution to physical clock synchronization in real-time distributed systems. The solution is dedicated to systems based on the factory instrumentation protocol (FIP) field bus. It is a fault-tolerant solution, it does not use dynamic election of a privileged station, and it allows minimization of the synchronization error, which is independent of the communication delay, to obtain a good synchronization accuracy. The initial states of clocks are not necessarily coherent. It is shown how characteristics of the FIP field bus enable such a solution to be developed