An Inexpensive and Easy Deployed Frequency Counter Based on the IEEE 1588 Network

The Precision Time synchronization Protocol (PTP), defined by IEEE-1588[1], is a time synchronization protocol which is capable of synchronizing clocks in a local area network within the precision of sub-microsecond. In this paper, we propose and test a new type of frequency counter using programmed Raspberry Pi 3[2] to be the slave clocks in PTP network for syncing the time base of our frequency counter with PTP grand master, and as input channels to receive the frequency under measuring. The test results showed the frequency stability of our PTP frequency counter is about 5.25E-9 at average time 1000 second with respect to the PTP grand master in the test network when measure the 2K Hz test signal. That means our PTP frequency counter is very potential to be used for massive low frequency and low resolution measurement.