PulseSync: An Efficient and Scalable Clock Synchronization Protocol

Christoph Lenzen, Philipp Sommer, Roger Wattenhofer

Abstract: Clock synchronization is an enabling service for a wide range of applications and protocols in both wired and wireless networks. We study the implications of clock drift and communication latency on the accuracy of clock synchronization when scaling the network diameter. Starting with a theoretical analysis of synchronization protocols, we prove tight bounds on the synchronization error in a model that assumes independently and randomly distributed communication delays and slowly changing drifts. While this model is more optimistic than traditional worst-case analysis, it much better captures the nature of real-world systems such as wireless networks. The bound on the synchronization accuracy, which is roughly the square root of the network diameter, is achieved by the novel PulseSync protocol. Extensive experiments demonstrate that PulseSync is able to meet the predictions from theory and tightly synchronizes large networks. This contrasts against an exponential growth of the skew incurred by the state-of-the-art protocol for wireless sensor networks. Moreover, PulseSync adapts much faster to network dynamics and changing clock drifts than this protocol.