Performance evaluation of the EtherCAT distributed clock algorithm

EtherCAT is a real-time Ethernet protocol conceived for industrial environments, which is characterised by high communication efficiency. It is provided with a suitable mechanism, known as distributed clock, that enables synchronised operations to be carried out with precise timings. This can be profitably adopted, for instance, in motion control applications. In this paper, the accuracy of the distributed clock mechanism is evaluated by means of experimental measurements carried out on a real network set-up. Results confirm that the achieved performance complies with expectations and is very good indeed.