Hardware-assisted clock synchronization in IEEE802.11 wireless real-time application

Keeping distributed clocks closely synchronized is one of the basic requirements in wireless real-time embedded applications. This paper presents a hardware-assisted clock synchronization scheme for wireless real-time application based on the IEEE 802.11 standard. The implementation algorithm is designed based on the principle of feedback control systems which tracking the value of timestamps in an IEEE 802.11 AP, this approach can release the burden of computing overhead compared to the software-only solution. Simulation results indicate that this approach can tolerate the message loss and achieve a continuously clock synchronization.