Research on Mobile Network High-precision Absolute Time Synchronization based on TAP

Abstract: With the development of mobile communication and industrial internet technologies, the demand for robust absolute time synchronization based on network for diverse scenarios is significantly growing. TAP is a novel network timing method that aims to achieve sub-microsecond synchronization over air interface. This paper investigates the improvement and end-to-end realization of TAP. This paper first analyzes the effectiveness and deficiencies of TAP by establishing an equivalent clock model which evaluates TAP from timing error composition and allan variance. Second, this paper proposes a detailed base station and terminal design and the corresponding improvement of TAP. Both hardware compensation and protocol software design are taken into account so as to minimize timing error and system cost while maximizing compatibility with 3GPP. Finally, this paper presents a TAP end-to-end 5G prototype system developed based on software defined radio base station and COTS baseband module. The field test results show that the proposed scheme effectively solves the problems of TAP in application and robustly achieves 200ns level timing accuracy in various situations. The average accuracy with long observations can reach 1 nanosecond. It is 2$\sim$3 orders of magnitude better than common network timing methods, including NTP, PTP and the original TAP.