Synchronization in Industrial IoT: Impact of propagation delay on time error

Abstract

The growing needs for wireless connectivity in smart industries raises opportunities for mobile service providers as well as industrial players, also known as verticals. This inevitably has increased challenges for both the parties involved. This is increasingly true for timing and synchronization requirements. Within this context, in this article, we present a detailed analysis of 'time synchronization errors'. These errors are commonly known to affect the delivery of accurate time needed to synchronize the robots and machines present inside the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) domain. To eliminate such errors, we propose a novel compensation technique to compensate for the random errors which occur due to the propagation delay in the wireless medium. The article concludes by providing numerous results based on simulations with discussions proving the efficacy of our proposal.