ZTE Ultra-High-Precision Time Synchronization

Network Provides Technical Support for 5G

Commercialization

At China Mobile Global Partners Conference held on November 14-16, 2019, the latest 5G
achievements were unveiled at various exhibition booths. With innovative applications and
dazzling vision, they attracted many people’s attention, such as piano playing and 5G holographic
experience. As new 5G services are continuously emerging, the mobile data traffic will grow
explosively in the future, and the demand for base station backhaul bandwidth will increase
substantially. In addition, the features of 5G networks and services including slicing, ultra-low
latency and high-precision time synchronization pose more and higher requirements for transport
networks. This document will describe the high-precision time synchronization solution of ZTE
transport network in detail.

5G time synchronization requirements are reflected in three aspects: time synchronization

requirement for basic services, time synchronization requirement for coordinated services and
time synchronization requirement for new services. The time synchronization requirement for
basic services is a common requirement for all TDD wireless systems, with an aim to avoid the
interference of uplink/downlink time slots. The coordination technologies including Multi Input
Multi Output (MIMO), Coordinated Multiple Points (CoMP) and Carrier Aggregation (CA) that will
be widely used in 5G systems also have strict requirements for time synchronization. 5G
networks need to provide base station locating service based on Time difference of Arrival (TDOA)
when transporting new services such as Internet of Vehicles and Industrial Internet. The 3GPP
protocol specifies the requirements for time synchronization in different scenarios, as shown in
Table 1:

Application High-precision locating

In-band CA CoMP
scenario service
For 3-meter locating
Time
±130ns ±130ns service, the time
precision
precision is 10ns
Table 1. Requirements for Time Precision in Various 5G Application Scenarios
Looking back at the current network situation, it is easy to find that we are facing the following
problems.
Traditional base station time synchronization solutions include the solution of obtaining time by
direct connection with GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System, like GPS/BDS) and the solution
of PTP synchronization on the ground. The GNSS solution increases the corresponding cost of
each base station. As the number of 5G base stations will be further increased in the future, the
investment will be huge. At the same time, the installation of GNSS antennas has a series of
construction requirements for net height, lightning protection, and property rights. Therefore, it is
difficult to deploy GNSS antennas on indoor equipment, and the overall deployment cost is high.
The ground PTP synchronization solution is a supplement to GNSS and has higher security.
However, the traditional solutions also have some problems. The first one lies in the time source
device. The early-stage mainstream time source device in the industry only has a precision level
of 100ns, which is rather low. Secondly, the end-to-end time precision of traditional transport
network is at µs level, which cannot meet the time precision requirements of new 5G technologies
and new 5G scenarios.

In order to support the full lifecycle of the 5G transport network, ZTE has actively explored the
ultra-high-precision time synchronization solution, and proposed the "3A" time synchronization
solution in 2017, including the following aspects:

At the time source level, the common view difference time source is introduced, that is, time
servers in different places receive the GPS information of the same navigation satellite at the
same time, to eliminate the influence of the satellite clock and the influence of most path delays.
In this way, the precision of relative clock difference between two places is improved, and
high-precision time comparison is achieved. Theoretically, the comparison precision of navigation
satellite common view can reach 3~5ns. The networking of one common view master clock
source and multiple common view slave clock sources are used (see Figure 1) to effectively
improve time accuracy and reduce network construction costs.
 Figure 1. Common View Difference Network

At the equipment level, based on ZTE’s in-house chips, the innovative PTP timestamp processing
mode is used to move the timestamp processing from the MAC layer to the PCS layer, thus
improving the timestamp precision. The clock-based phase detection technology is used to obtain
high-precision time by using low-frequency clocks. At the same time, time distribution errors in the
transport equipment system are optimized. The combination of the above technologies effectively
eliminate the errors caused by PTP computing and system distribution. The time precision of
single-node equipment is successfully raised from the industry average ±30ns to the ±5ns level,
reaching the Class D level defined by the G.8273.2 protocol, which takes the leading position in
the industry.

In addition, ZTE has introduced the FlexE interface-based time synchronization and
precision-weighted BMC algorithm, to adapt to the new feature of clock time transfer of
new-generation transport equipment through FlexE interfaces and solve the problem of time
source selection in a hybrid network of new and old devices with different precision. In the FlexE
interface-based clock time transfer, PTP time ports are established based on FlexE Group or
FlexE ports. The synchronization packets are carried in the FlexE overhead mode. The complete
66B block in Line 6 of the FlexE overhead frame structure is used to fill in the synchronization
packets. The FlexE multiframe is used to transmit PTP and SSM packets.

At the time synchronization network architecture and deployment level, the time source device
can be moved downwards in accordance with service requirements to reduce the number of clock
hops, and the number of network node hops is strictly required (see Figure 2). The time source
device is deployed at the edge of the aggregation layer to reduce the number of hops and the
cost of GNSS receiver at the base station, so as to cut operators’ investments. In addition,
compared with the traditional time source, the precision of the new high-precision clock source
equipment is also increased to ±30ns by 70%. Finally, the time synchronization configuration
detection is more efficient, and the fault location is faster, improving the network self-healing
capability.

Figure 2. Time Source Being Moved Down

The 5G ultra-high-precision time synchronization network can fill the gap in indoor high-precision
positioning and provide support for indoor high-precision location service and outdoor seamless
location service. In terms of industry-level applications, it will enable highly precise positioning
applications in manufacturing, Internet of Vehicles (IoV), Internet of Things (IoT), and rail
transportation. Traffic monitoring and management based on vehicle location service will make
smart transportation a reality. Through precise traffic monitoring, this solution can predict the
traffic in advance and adjust the time of traffic lights and tide lanes accordingly, so as to
fundamentally solve the urban traffic congestion problem. In terms of consumption-level
applications, it will enable high-precision positioning applications such as smart shopping mall,
intelligent scene perception and smart home. For example, in a large-scale Shopping Mall, it can
provide shop navigation for mobile users, and precisely push advertisements based on the
locations of mobile users.

To sum up, ZTE’s 5G ultra-high-precision time synchronization network will provide fundamental
support for the commercial deployment of 5G networks and strong guarantee for industry-level
applications and consumption-level applications.