IEEE 1588-Based Timing and Triggering Prototype for Distributed Power Supplies in HIAF

In High-Intensity Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF), a high precision timing system is necessary because highly synchronous triggering of distributed power supply (PS) is essential for the facility operation. To obtain a cost-effective local area timing system, a nanosecond-accuracy private synchronization approach based on IEEE 1588 protocol is proposed. Instead of Ethernet protocol usually used, universal asynchronous transceiver protocol over dedicated optical fiber is applied in the method to avoid the uncertain delay in Ethernet architecture. Besides, the timing system simplifies the communication message formats and increases synchronization frequency to 1 kHz to reduce the timing deviation due to oscillator frequency deviation. The test results show that the implementation ensures a synchronization accuracy of better than +/- 10 ns with 2 ppm temperature-compensation crystal oscillator (TCXO) for dozens of distributed PS controllers.