Improved Timing for better performance of distributed data acquisition systems

Distributed data acquisition systems are the norm in the great majority of industry branches where the process to be controlled covers a physically large and often fragmented area. Many local smaller data acquisition modules are interfaced and pass raw or pre-processed data along with the timing signals. 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 presents a study for 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.