PARTNER CONTENT: With 5G connectivity becoming increasingly critical to the world’s biggest industries, economies and even areas of national defence, an element of the technology that does not generate many headlines is the importance of resilient time synchronisation. Net Insight’s Per Lindgren outlines why it is time to redefine 5G sync to future proof networks today and in the future.

For Lindgren, CTO and Head of Sync at Sweden-based Net Insight, time synchronisation is something of a forgotten feature when it comes to connectivity, and it is crucial that its importance is highlighted in the 5G era.

“Synchronisation is a little bit of a lost, forgotten trade,” he said. “It was huge back in the early telecoms days, but when we went over to IP and 3G and 4G, it all became about frequency.”

With 5G TDD time synchronisation challenges becoming more prevalent, Sweden-based Net Insight, with more than 25 years’ experience, is on a mission to not only raise awareness, but offer operators’ solutions that are increasingly required.

The company runs a GNSS/GPS independent time synchronisation overlay solution for TDD 5G networks, based on its Precision TimeNet technology dubbed Zyntai. As well as ensuring high accuracy, performance, and lower costs, Net Insight claims the solution accelerates 5G deployment over existing IP/MPLS networks, also when using leased capacity.

Not fit for purpose
Today, with 5G TDD, the concept of time has again become a very critical function, and with the geopolitical landscape the way it is, Net Insight argues popular Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) solutions such as GPS or network-based approaches like Precision Time Protocol (PTP) are often not fit for purpose: pointing out vulnerability to interferences for GNSS, and PTP not being designed for larger networks while being subject to costly and time-sensitive upgrades.

A Financial Times (FT) article entitled ‘How GPS warfare is playing havoc with civilian life’, published earlier this year, summed up some of the challenges, with systematic interference by armed forces resulting in a surge in GPS jamming and spoofing.

In an analysis as part of the article, data from tracking service Flightradar24 found almost 40 million people lived in areas with unreliable GPS signals for at least half of the past six months, with widespread issues caused by geopolitical tensions and the conflicts in Ukraine and Middle East.   

“When you have a signal and it’s available, it’s great,” said Lindgren of GPS. “You set up an antenna and you have a GPS receiver, and you get an accurate timing. The problem occurs because they are very weak signals, and because it comes from a satellite it is very easy to jam.”

Lindgren explained spoofing runs like a masquerade attack, whereby someone thinks you are in a location but given the wrong time – but this also means the wrong position, which of course is a very dangerous situation in conflict zones.

He continued to state the risk of spoofing attacks on 5G base stations which could start to impact neighbouring base stations and degrade performance, while adding that jamming is even harder to protect against.

The executive noted one of its first customers, Türk Telekom, was seeking to deploy a more secure synchronisation solution to address that very threat coming from geopolitical conflict. “When they first started trialling and deploying 5G, their proximity to Russia and Syria made them aware of how jammed and unreliable GPS could be in certain areas.”

Future proofing 5G
While the geopolitical situation continues to worsen, 5G uptake in general continues to mature and it is becoming undeniable that advanced connectivity is critical to the way the world works.

And the importance of the battle ahead must not be underestimated, given the growing size of the market it is addressing. A report published at the start of 2024 by research company SNS Telecom & IT found the combined market for public and private LTE and 5G for critical communications will be worth $5.5 billion globally by the end of 2026.

The report stated 5G is increasingly “gaining recognition as an all-inclusive critical communications platform for the delivery of mobile broadband and industrial IoT capabilities, as well as mission critical push-to-talk voice functionality”.

To emphasise how dependent societies are on GNSS today, the European Commission found the continent’s offerings (Galileo and EGNOS) play a crucial role in enabling more than 10 per cent of GDP, amounting to more than €14 trillion.

Lindgren was keen to highlight the fact that the ITU has also “realised a gap in the standards”, which has led to the body developing Enhanced Partial Timing Support, a new sync standard to address challenges with current methods.

Indeed, not only is 5G becoming critical for national defence, but it is also being placed at the centre of a wider digital transformation drive impacting various industries including manufacturing, logistics, mining and more.

Lindgren noted advanced 5G is now crucial across critical infrastructure, pointing to first responder networks, industry automation and media, which is perhaps an indication that it is being used in a different way to 4G, which is more consumer orientated.

Sweden leads the way
While Net Insight is keen to draw more attention to the problem, its home market of Sweden has certainly not been sleeping on the issue. The country has emerged as something of a pioneer, developing one of the world’s first leading time services to ensure national robustness and remove dependency from current methods for this critical service.

Swedish regulator PTS has worked for more than a decade to explore the best ways to deal with the vulnerabilities related to time services dependent on GNSS.

Its work resulted in the issue of a mandate for all 5G networks in the country to use a GPS/GNSS independent solution for synchronisation, required to be in place by the start of 2025.

Lindgren said the country’s early push gives further weight to the theory that 5G is becoming an increasingly critical infrastructure, while pointing to the country’s general landscape of being mobile first in areas such as payments for example.

“The cost of society losing 5G and losing GPS is very high, but that being said I was still surprised Sweden put the mandate in first.”

So far, both 3 Sweden and state-owned operator Teracom are using Net Insight’s solution to comply to the Swedish regulator requirements of GNSS independence.

Traction
Naturally, the International Timing and Synchronisation Forum, held last month in Seville, showcased the issues around this technology and brought together different industries who require solutions.

This year’s event focused on network resilience and the ability to ensure robust synchronisation, while a lot of attention was given to the dangers on relying solely on GNSS.

With industries including media, power utilities, telecoms, government and defence all highlighted, it is clear that timing and synchronisation is gaining traction.

However, it will arguably need other nations to follow Sweden and take an equally strong stance for it to truly enter the mainstream conversation. And Lindgren certainly thinks that is a possibility.

“There are discussions in the US, and I know the European Union has it on the agenda. Exactly how these different countries will do it, I think will depend. It may not be a mandate, but we could definitely see strong recommendations.”