Embedded Clock Skew Estimation in Industrial Networks

Time synchronization is an indispensable requirement for industrial networks. A prominent time synchronization protocol for industrial applications is based on the well-known IEEE 1588 standard. This letter investigates a bandwidth efficient clock skew estimation scheme for IEEE 1588 enhancement, which embeds skew estimation tasks into the network data traffic, to provide improved clock skew estimation without additional bandwidth overhead. A minimum conditional risk invariant estimator is derived that is capable of estimating the clock skew under arbitrary delay models. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and performance enhancement of the proposed estimator.