Direct Search Algorithm for Clock Skew Compensation Immune to Floating-Point Precision Loss

Abstract

We have been investigating clock skew compensation immune to floating-point precision loss by taking into account the discrete nature of clocks in digital communication systems; extending Bresenham's line drawing algorithm, we constructed an incremental error algorithm using only integer addition/subtraction and comparison. Still, bounding the initial value of the clock remains a challenge, which determines the initial condition of the algorithm and thereby its number of iterations. In this letter, we propose a new incremental error algorithm for clock skew compensation, called direct search, which no longer relies on the bounds on the initial value of the clock. The numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the number of iterations in comparison to the prior work while eliminating the effect of floating-point precision loss on clock skew compensation.