Hardware centralized time synchronization hub for an autonomous driving vehicle

An autonomous driving system, comprising:

• a plurality of sensors mounted on a plurality of locations of an autonomous driving vehicle (ADV);
• a host system located at the ADV to perceive a driving environment surrounding the ADV based on sensor data obtained from the sensors and to plan a path to autonomously drive the ADV;
• and
• a sensor unit coupled to the plurality of sensors and the host system, wherein the sensor unit comprises
• a sensor interface to be coupled to the plurality of sensors mounted on the ADV,
• a host interface to be coupled to the host system, and
• a time synchronization hub device coupled to the sensor interface, wherein the time synchronization hub device includes
• one or more transmit (TX) timestamp generators coupled to a time source, wherein the TX timestamp generators generate TX timestamps based on a time obtained from the time source to provide the TX timestamps to one or more of the sensors indicating a time the sensors transmit sensor data to the host system located at the ADV via the host interface, and
• one or more receive (RX) timestamp generators coupled to the time source, wherein the RX timestamp generators generate RX timestamps based on the time obtained from the time source to provide the RX timestamps to the same one or more of the sensors indicating a time when sensor data is received from the sensors such that each of the one or more of the sensors is associated with at least a TX timestamp and a RX timestamp.