System and method for implementing time synchronization monitoring and detection in a safety instrumented system

Abstract

An apparatus, system and process is provided from communicating safety-related data, over an open system, from a sender to a receiver. Safety-related components, including function blocks, flexible function blocks, resource blocks and transducer blocks, as well as, safety-related objects are provided. Also, a time synchronization monitor is provided for monitoring timing distributions and determining when such distributions have drifted beyond an acceptable limit.

1 . An apparatus comprising:
 a processor configured to determine whether at least one message communicated over a transmission medium has not been queued by monitoring time synchronization by comparing an actual drift to an allowable drift, wherein the allowable drift is calculated by comparing a first black channel clock determined after processing of a previous time distribution to a second safety layer clock determined after processing of a current time distribution and multiplying the result by a constant; and   a medium attachment unit, which communicates the time distributions and output messages between the processor and a transmission medium.   
   
   
       2 - 19 . (canceled)