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Based on kernel version 3.9. Page generated on 2013-05-02 23:12 EST.

	
				PPS - Pulse Per Second
				----------------------
	
	(C) Copyright 2007 Rodolfo Giometti <giometti@enneenne.com>
	
	This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
	it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
	the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
	(at your option) any later version.
	
	This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
	but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
	MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
	GNU General Public License for more details.
	
	
	
	Overview
	--------
	
	LinuxPPS provides a programming interface (API) to define in the
	system several PPS sources.
	
	PPS means "pulse per second" and a PPS source is just a device which
	provides a high precision signal each second so that an application
	can use it to adjust system clock time.
	
	A PPS source can be connected to a serial port (usually to the Data
	Carrier Detect pin) or to a parallel port (ACK-pin) or to a special
	CPU's GPIOs (this is the common case in embedded systems) but in each
	case when a new pulse arrives the system must apply to it a timestamp
	and record it for userland.
	
	Common use is the combination of the NTPD as userland program, with a
	GPS receiver as PPS source, to obtain a wallclock-time with
	sub-millisecond synchronisation to UTC.
	
	
	RFC considerations
	------------------
	
	While implementing a PPS API as RFC 2783 defines and using an embedded
	CPU GPIO-Pin as physical link to the signal, I encountered a deeper
	problem:
	
	   At startup it needs a file descriptor as argument for the function
	   time_pps_create().
	
	This implies that the source has a /dev/... entry. This assumption is
	ok for the serial and parallel port, where you can do something
	useful besides(!) the gathering of timestamps as it is the central
	task for a PPS-API. But this assumption does not work for a single
	purpose GPIO line. In this case even basic file-related functionality
	(like read() and write()) makes no sense at all and should not be a
	precondition for the use of a PPS-API.
	
	The problem can be simply solved if you consider that a PPS source is
	not always connected with a GPS data source.
	
	So your programs should check if the GPS data source (the serial port
	for instance) is a PPS source too, and if not they should provide the
	possibility to open another device as PPS source.
	
	In LinuxPPS the PPS sources are simply char devices usually mapped
	into files /dev/pps0, /dev/pps1, etc..
	
	
	Coding example
	--------------
	
	To register a PPS source into the kernel you should define a struct
	pps_source_info_s as follows:
	
	    static struct pps_source_info pps_ktimer_info = {
		    .name         = "ktimer",
		    .path         = "",
		    .mode         = PPS_CAPTUREASSERT | PPS_OFFSETASSERT | \
				    PPS_ECHOASSERT | \
				    PPS_CANWAIT | PPS_TSFMT_TSPEC,
		    .echo         = pps_ktimer_echo,
		    .owner        = THIS_MODULE,
	    };
	
	and then calling the function pps_register_source() in your
	intialization routine as follows:
	
	    source = pps_register_source(&pps_ktimer_info,
				PPS_CAPTUREASSERT | PPS_OFFSETASSERT);
	
	The pps_register_source() prototype is:
	
	  int pps_register_source(struct pps_source_info_s *info, int default_params)
	
	where "info" is a pointer to a structure that describes a particular
	PPS source, "default_params" tells the system what the initial default
	parameters for the device should be (it is obvious that these parameters
	must be a subset of ones defined in the struct
	pps_source_info_s which describe the capabilities of the driver).
	
	Once you have registered a new PPS source into the system you can
	signal an assert event (for example in the interrupt handler routine)
	just using:
	
	    pps_event(source, &ts, PPS_CAPTUREASSERT, ptr)
	
	where "ts" is the event's timestamp.
	
	The same function may also run the defined echo function
	(pps_ktimer_echo(), passing to it the "ptr" pointer) if the user
	asked for that... etc..
	
	Please see the file drivers/pps/clients/ktimer.c for example code.
	
	
	SYSFS support
	-------------
	
	If the SYSFS filesystem is enabled in the kernel it provides a new class:
	
	   $ ls /sys/class/pps/
	   pps0/  pps1/  pps2/
	
	Every directory is the ID of a PPS sources defined in the system and
	inside you find several files:
	
	   $ ls /sys/class/pps/pps0/
	   assert	clear  echo  mode  name  path  subsystem@  uevent
	
	Inside each "assert" and "clear" file you can find the timestamp and a
	sequence number:
	
	   $ cat /sys/class/pps/pps0/assert
	   1170026870.983207967#8
	
	Where before the "#" is the timestamp in seconds; after it is the
	sequence number. Other files are:
	
	* echo: reports if the PPS source has an echo function or not;
	
	* mode: reports available PPS functioning modes;
	
	* name: reports the PPS source's name;
	
	* path: reports the PPS source's device path, that is the device the
	  PPS source is connected to (if it exists).
	
	
	Testing the PPS support
	-----------------------
	
	In order to test the PPS support even without specific hardware you can use
	the ktimer driver (see the client subsection in the PPS configuration menu)
	and the userland tools provided into Documentaion/pps/ directory.
	
	Once you have enabled the compilation of ktimer just modprobe it (if
	not statically compiled):
	
	   # modprobe ktimer
	
	and the run ppstest as follow:
	
	   $ ./ppstest /dev/pps0
	   trying PPS source "/dev/pps1"
	   found PPS source "/dev/pps1"
	   ok, found 1 source(s), now start fetching data...
	   source 0 - assert 1186592699.388832443, sequence: 364 - clear  0.000000000, sequence: 0
	   source 0 - assert 1186592700.388931295, sequence: 365 - clear  0.000000000, sequence: 0
	   source 0 - assert 1186592701.389032765, sequence: 366 - clear  0.000000000, sequence: 0
	
	Please, note that to compile userland programs you need the file timepps.h
	(see Documentation/pps/).
	
	
	Generators
	----------
	
	Sometimes one needs to be able not only to catch PPS signals but to produce
	them also. For example, running a distributed simulation, which requires
	computers' clock to be synchronized very tightly. One way to do this is to
	invent some complicated hardware solutions but it may be neither necessary
	nor affordable. The cheap way is to load a PPS generator on one of the
	computers (master) and PPS clients on others (slaves), and use very simple
	cables to deliver signals using parallel ports, for example.
	
	Parallel port cable pinout:
	pin	name	master      slave
	1	STROBE	  *------     *
	2	D0	  *     |     *
	3	D1	  *     |     *
	4	D2	  *     |     *
	5	D3	  *     |     *
	6	D4	  *     |     *
	7	D5	  *     |     *
	8	D6	  *     |     *
	9	D7	  *     |     *
	10	ACK	  *     ------*
	11	BUSY	  *           *
	12	PE	  *           *
	13	SEL	  *           *
	14	AUTOFD	  *           *
	15	ERROR	  *           *
	16	INIT	  *           *
	17	SELIN	  *           *
	18-25	GND	  *-----------*
	
	Please note that parallel port interrupt occurs only on high->low transition,
	so it is used for PPS assert edge. PPS clear edge can be determined only
	using polling in the interrupt handler which actually can be done way more
	precisely because interrupt handling delays can be quite big and random. So
	current parport PPS generator implementation (pps_gen_parport module) is
	geared towards using the clear edge for time synchronization.
	
	Clear edge polling is done with disabled interrupts so it's better to select
	delay between assert and clear edge as small as possible to reduce system
	latencies. But if it is too small slave won't be able to capture clear edge
	transition. The default of 30us should be good enough in most situations.
	The delay can be selected using 'delay' pps_gen_parport module parameter.

• [ Documentation ]
• pps.txt
•