A New Distributed Approach for Achieving Clock Synchronization in Heterogeneous Networks

Heterogeneous networks have the potential to improve coverage, throughput, and energy efficiency of wireless networks through the use of specialized cellular structures, in particular femtocells and macrocells. However, to reduce interference between different cells, ensure smooth hand-offs from cell to cell, and achieve seamless operation the overall network needs to be synchronized. In this paper a new distributed clock synchronization scheme for heterogeneous networks is proposed that employs the clock drift ratio (CDR) information available at user-equipments (UEs) to achieve synchronization between non-interacting femtocells and macrocells. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can significantly reduce the clock drift between macrocells and femtocells and result in timing synchronization throughout the network without introducing significant overhead.