Enhancing industrial IoT with time synchronisation: Integrating PTP and gPTP for metrology networks in the factory of the future

The growth of the Industrial Internet of Things has brought new solutions to the challenge of synchronisation deficiencies in metrology networks. This paper proposes a low-cost concept of the Unified Sensing Network (USN) with an aim to facilitate the deployment of time synchronisation technologies in industrial environments. By addressing the gaps in existing research, in particular the lack of compatibility with non-time-aware devices and quantitative performance evaluation in diverse network environments, the study extends the analysis to USN domains. Through extensive experiments, this work evaluates synchronisation accuracy in heterogeneous environments and provides an overview of the implementation on embedded platforms. The results confirm the performance of USN, which will enhance the measurement performance in future factories.