B2.1 - Deterministic Time-Synchronized Wireless Sensors for Lightweight Flight Test Instrumentation
- Event
- ETTC 2026 - European Test and Telemetry Conference
2026-06-09 - 2026-06-11
Nuremberg - Chapter
- Networks & Architectures
- Author(s)
- M. Grafe, D. Yemelyanau, S. Ginka - Sensry GmbH, Dresden (Germany)
- Pages
- 191 - 196
- DOI
- 10.5162/ettc2026/B2.1
- Price
- free
Abstract
This paper presents a method for achieving nanosecond-accurate wireless time synchronization of Bluetooth-based sensor nodes aligned to an IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) Grandmaster. In modern flight test instrumentation (FTI), increasing sensor density and heterogeneous measurements require precise temporal correlation of distributed data sources. While wireless sensors reduce cabling effort and installation complexity, they typically lack deterministic and globally synchronized timing. The proposed approach enables absolute time synchronization of wireless sensor nodes via a PTPsynchronized gateway and an associated Time Master operating in parallel with the Bluetooth host. The Time Master distributes the global time reference in nanosecond-accuracy to all connected devices, allowing various sensor measurements such as vibration, strain, and temperature to be timestamped with nanosecond accuracy. Furthermore, a System-on-Chip (SoC) with an integrated Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Ethernet interface supporting IEEE 1588 (PTP) and IEEE 802.1AS (gPTP) is introduced. This approach enables further system miniaturization by replacing the gateway, thereby reducing hardware footprint, power consumption, and installation effort in FTI applications.