Multi-Phase Correlator-based Realistic Clock Synchronization for Wireless Networks on IEEE 802.15.4

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