Improved Timing for better performance of distributed data acquisition systems - a further refinement

Abstract

Continuing the works debuted in the previous work “Improved Timing for better performance of distributed data acquisition systems” the present paper refines and revisits the concept of a local oscillator with GPS corrections as a source of long-term stable reference clock signals with direct application in distributed data acquisition systems. The system as described herein can generate precise and repeatable clock source signals for trigger and sync of various data acquisition equipment when used in mixed and distributed architectures. These timing signals are a vital part of data acquisition as oftentimes raw data is processed as time series and correlations are made based on timestamps. This paper details improvements in implementation of a cost-effective high precision time base (reference clock) using a GPS receiver as a primary time source and a local high precision real time clock as a secondary oscillator. The improvements to the previous version come both from hardware refinements and from updated software with reduced latencies and reconfigured structure that allows for compensation of internal delays and internal process offsets.