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Title
On the Scalability of Cooperative Time Synchronization in Pulse-Connected Networks.

Authors
A. Hu, S. D. Servetto.

Status
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 52(6):2725-2748, 2006.

Abstract
We consider the problem of time synchronization in dense wireless networks. Well established synchronization techniques suffer from an inherent scalability problem in that synchronization errors grow with an increasing number of hops across the network. In this work, first we develop a model for communication in wireless networks, and then we use the model to define a new time synchronization mechanism. A salient feature of the proposed method is that, in the regime of asymptotically dense networks, it can average out all random errors and maintain global synchronization in the sense that all nodes in the multi-hop network can see identical timing signals. This is irrespective of the distance separating any two nodes.

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Previous conference papers:

A. Hu, S. D. Servetto. Cooperative Time Synchronization with Propagation Delay: Model and Analysis. In the Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, Urbana, IL, October 2005.

A related journal paper:

A. Hu, S. D. Servetto. Algorithmic Aspects of the Time Synchronization Problem in Large-Scale Sensor Networks. ACM/Kluwer Journal on Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET), 10:491-503, 2005. Special Issue on Wireless Sensor Networks, with selected (and revised) papers from ACM WSNA 2003. Invited Paper.