FLSmidth Automation / Solutions / Utilities / Time Synchronization / Time Synchronization

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Time Synchronization

It is getting more common to connect control systems on different plants, over geographically long distances. In order to ensure time consistency between the different systems, a satellite time server is required and requested by many customers.

The product consists of a hardware receiver, which communicate with satellites. This hardware time server is then connected to the network, whereby it allows for time synchronisation with any F.L.Smidth Automation PC.

The system is supported on all F.L.Smidth Automation PC-based products, and can be easily integrated with any existing control system.

Importance of Time Synchronisation

Modern F.L.Smidth Automation Control Systems are internally synchronised, but not towards external systems:

Data Exchange
Control Systems exchanging or synchronising data with other systems, must be concerned with the precision of the data.
These are some examples of where Time Synchronisation can be vital:

Multiple lines sharing utility PLC's.
Exchanging data with power plants.
Process troubleshooting (sequence in failures comparison)

ECS/PlantGuide
If you are a user of the ECS/PlantGuide Management Information System (MIS) and have multiple plants, you may have configured your system to be able to gather data from several ECS/PlantGuide servers and use it for comparison. If you are not using synchronized times, the time information can be wrong - leaving unusable data.

Environmental Reporting
When performing environmental report, it is implicit that precise time synchronisation is taking place. You must be certain that the data you report is accurate, making it possible to troubleshoot environmental problems.

How it works

The hardware time server is a micro computer that has an external connection to a satellite. The time server will search and verify the satellites available. One of the accepted time servers will then be selected and the hardware equipment is ready for use.

Typically you would configure one ECS server (the time master) to use the satellite time server, and then let the remaining ECS clients, servers and PLC's equipment synchronise with their respective ECS servers (as is the normal configuration). This ensures a truly dual control system with time synchronisation, where the internal integrity is preserved, but yet keeping a synchronized system.

The hardware time server uses the standard NTP protocol, why it can be integrated into any system supporting TCP/IP.

System Requirements

The Time Synchronization product requires a modern computer based system with TCP/IP connectivity and support for the NTP protocol.

These requirements are fulfilled by the ECS v4 (VMS), ECS v6 (Windows NT) and ECS v7 (Windows 2000, XP and 2003) systems.