Clock Frequency Offset Correction through Computationally Simple Algorithms

Abstract

Clock synchronization among network nodes is a fundamental requirement for many applications. In some scenarios, the algorithm efficiency is also a crucial factor for energy conservation. Many different solutions have been proposed addressing this problem ranging from computationally expensive to very simple statistical methods. There is a complexity-performance tradeoff involved such that the efficient and robust techniques demand highly computational resources. In this paper, a new clock synchronization scheme is presented with the following characteristics: when the network delays originate from an exponential distribution, it performs better than the maximum likelihood and other complex estimators but with much reduced complexity, and it is robust to the underlying network delay probability density function otherwise. Therefore, it is suitable to both energy constrained and unconstrained network synchronization requirements.