Multi-phase correlator-based realistic clock synchronization for IEEE 802.15.4 networks

Clock synchronization is one of the most crucial and fundamental issues in distributed networks. Inaccurate factors in synchronizing clocks between nodes in the network can occur at any point in the network layers. Most uncertainties caused at the upper layers can be eliminated by hardware-assisted time stamping. However, eliminating the uncertainty of a physical layer is difficult. This paper proposes a multi-phase correlator-based clock synchronization method to mitigate the time representation error at the physical layer and improve synchronization accuracy by introducing a time representation error, which is one of physical uncertainties. Further, to apply the proposed method to a realistic environment, we implement and evaluate the proposed multi-phase correlator. Our experimental results show that the accuracy of the proposed method is better than that of a conventional approach in terms of minimizing the time representation error.