Effects of Long-Term Clock Instability on Master-Slave Networks

Two types of master-slave networks are investigated: oneway and two-way master-slave networks. The one-way master-slave System is a generalization of the well-known hierarchical master-slave tree system. The two-way master-slave system is a novel concept. Sufficient stability conditions are given for both network types. After synchronization is achieved, the frequency drift rate of all oscillators in the network approaches the frequency drift rate of the master oscillator. The steady-state frequency differences between the oscillators and their variances are computed for six network configurations of practical interest. A performance comparison for different network connectivities shows that the two-way master-slave system with a star configuration has the best performance.