Pulse Synchronization for Vehicular Networks

Abstract

This paper improves pulse-coupled synchronization for highly dynamic wireless networks, where vehicles may move unpredictably, causing topological changes of the network. For pulse-coupled methods, vehicles broadcast zerobit pulses to estimate the clock differences to their neighbors. Vehicles then update local clocks according to the average of difference of pulses from its neighbors. The proposed algorithm further introduces (1) a time wheel to improve the robustness of the synchronization protocol and (2) an additional drift compensation mechanism to reduce clock skew. We compare our new algorithm to previous works via simulation. Both static and dynamic networks are simulated and compared. Different frequencies and clock drifts are analyzed. The proposed algorithm adapts to highly dynamic vehicle networks more quickly and more robustly than previous algorithms.