Delay and Jitter Analysis in Industrial Control Systems: A Paper Mill Case Study

Industrial control systems have strict requirements for time-sensitive applications and clock synchronization services. Performance of such applications is adversely impacted by packet delays and jitters. The impact is especially critical in process industries due to harsh environmental conditions. In this paper, we analyze delays and jitters to assess the performance of time-sensitive applications. To this end, we captured and analyzed round trip delay data retrieved from a paper factory. Analysis shows that a sub-millisecond level average delays and the jitters derived from the observed data are sufficient to meet the minimum 10ms update frequency required for most critical control applications. Moreover, the filtered delay variations at the end devices are less than the recommended 150us, which guarantees an adequate time synchronization accuracy in the factory network. Besides, this analysis can provide significant insights into performance bottlenecks for factory applications.