A Hybrid Approach for Synchronizing Clocks in Distributed Systems

Abstract

The art of synchronizing clocks across a wide area network has got a new dimension when it comes to the reality of achieving the demand for high-accuracy synchronization; even for local or small computing systems. Before implementing any clock synchronization protocol, some important aspects must be considered. For example, communication latency- is it fixed or variable? Does there exist any reference clock in the system or not? In this paper, we have studied the standard and experimental protocols for synchronizing clocks over a geographically distributed network and implemented the features of the Network Time Protocol (NTP) combined with the timing signal of Global Positioning System (GPS) for synchronizing distributed system’s clocks more accurately. Our proposed system can achieve higher clock synchronization accuracy compared to the traditional NTP clock synchronization protocol with the help of our designed decentralized GPS-based NTP servers.