Temperature Effect and Correction Method of White Rabbit Timing Link

Abstract: To guarantee the angular resolution, the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) requires a 500ps (rms) timing synchronization among the 6866 detect units for its KM2A sub-detector array. The White Rabbit technology is applied which combines sub-nanosecond precision timing transfer and gigabit Ethernet data transfer over the same fiber media. Deployed on a wild field at 4300m a.s.l. altitude, the WR network must maintain the precision over a wide temperature range. The temperature effect on a small WR link is measured, and contributions from different components like optical fiber, SFP module, fixed delay on PCB and ICs are separately studied and analyzed. An online real-time temperature correction method was applied based on the result which significantly reduce the synchronization variation from 300 ps to 50 ps in a temperature range of 50 degrees centigrade.