Synchronization performance of the Precision Time Protocol: Effect of clock frequency drift on the line delay computation

The Precision Time Protocol (PTP) of the IEEE 1588 standard relies on two processes: the timing propagation process and the line delay estimation process. It is important to study the factors that affect the quality of these synchronization sub-processes, in order to expand the limit on the number of slaves synchronizable within a given synchronization precision. This short work-in-progress paper analytically studies the sensitivity of the line delay computation to linear clock frequency drift.