EL Highlights Nov 2011

EL Researcher Chairs International Symposium on Precision Clock Synchronization

EL researcher Kang Lee served as General Chair of the 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Precision Clock Synchronization for Measurement, Control, and Communication held at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Munich, Germany on September 12-16. The symposium was sponsored by the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society (I&MS), with NIST, TUM, and the Austrian Academy of Science serving as technical co-sponsors. The symposium consisted of two parts – the technical conference and the interoperability "plugfest." About 150 international participants attended the conference and exchanged research results on precision clock synchronization.

The precision clock synchronization protocol defined by the IEEE 1588 standard has been adopted by several industry sectors, including test and measurement, industrial automation, power and utility, proposed Smart Grid, semiconductor, telecommunication, and military. In addition, 32 organizations (including NIST) participated in interoperability testing and demonstrations of hardware and software implementations and testbeds based on the IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP). This was the first time that the power and telecommunication profiles of the IEEE 1588 standard have been tested in a public forum.

During a special session on the IEEE 1588 standard, industry voiced several needs for future updates and expanded capabilities of the standard. Kang's efforts in developing and testing the IEEE 1588 standard with industry partners help to improve the performance of manufacturing systems through the precision time synchronization of sensor networks and precision time stamping of sensor data.

Contact: Kang Lee, (301) 975-6604