Sensor Synchronization Technologies

Shipboard condition monitoring, condition-based maintenance, measurement, and control systems involve the exchange of information among one or more controllers and numerous sensors and actuators. Correct operation of these systems requires that the temporal relationships of the sensor readings, actuator settings, and controller computations be synchronized. Navy desires to achieve the time synchronization of events on all sensors especially the smart/digital sensors utilizing standards and open architectures as much as possible. Under Phase I of this SBIR, 3eTI's Team will perform Tradeoff Analysis for time synchronization technologies. Based on our initial study, we will implement the open standard IEEE 1588 for Precision Clock Synchronization Protocol for Networked Measurement and Control System in the following steps: (i) Developing the IEEE 1588 software and implement it on the 3eTI NCAP platform. (ii) Prototyping the IEEE 1588 time synchronization with IEEE P1451.3 and P1451.5 smart sensors using NCAP as the core platform integrating the smart sensor networks. (iii) Based on performance data, further software and hardware based optimization will be proposed. 3eTI's vision is to develop a unified solution that provides time synchronization support to heterogeneous smart sensor network simultaneously. A report will be provided that details the concept, suggested metrics and estimated life-cycle costs