The 13th White Rabbit Workshop will be held March 21-22 at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. There, MLE will present “Light Rabbit: Implementing a White Rabbit node on COTS AMD development boards without relying on external VCXOs.”
White Rabbit is a technology that allows to synchronize networked devices or endpoints tens of kilometers apart with a sub-nanosecond accuracy. With minor, but incompatible changes, it is now fully integrated into the IEEE1588-2019 or PTP v2.1 standard as high accuracy (HA) profile.
Each endpoint employs frequency and phase measurement and adjustment techniques using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and external voltage-controlled crystal oscillators (VCXOs). This usually requires external circuit boards with specific components not available on commercially off-the-shelf (COTS) development boards.
At the workshop, we will share our results of implementing White Rabbit nodes on multiple development boards, e.g. AMD ZC706 and ZCU102 by only using the FPGA’s resources such as either Mixed-Mode Clock Managers (MMCMs) on the ZC706 or Quad Phase-Locked-Loops (QPLL) on the ZCU102, capable of fully synchronizing with other White Rabbit hardware, such as a Seven Solutions White Rabbit switch (WRS 3/18).
We also compared our synchronized endpoints on the ZCU102 and ZC706 to the timing source of the White Rabbit switch. We obtained initial experimental results of our two VCXO-less White Rabbit implementations using a time interval counter (TIC) for measuring the generated pulse-per-second (PPS) signal and a custom Digital Dual Mixer Time Difference (D-DMTD) circuit for the 10 MHz signal. To validate our measurement approach, we also did a spectrum analysis and a time-interval error analysis of the 10 MHz signals with a professional Rohde&Schwarz RTO1044 oscilloscope.
Date: Thursday March 21, 2024
Session 1.9: 1:30pm-1:55pm CEST
Location: CERN in Geneva, Switzerland