Joint Time Synchronization and Ranging for a Mobile Wireless Network

Time synchronization is a fundamental and paramount technology for a wireless network when a cooperative mission is performed. In this letter, the problem of how to achieve time synchronization and ranging for a mobile wireless network is addressed. The case of all nodes are in motion, equipped with a drifting clock, and capable of communicating with each other under unknown positions and velocities is handled. A network-wide model for synchronizing time-varying clocks and measuring relative distance is presented, from which the clock skews, clock offsets, and virtual polynomial coefficients related to the relative distances could be estimated. The Cramér-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) is derived for the proposed model. The simulation results show that the proposed method is close to the best result of the existing available estimators and meets the CRLB. Furthermore, compared with the existing estimators, the proposed method is able to reduce the overall communication overheads and streamline the process.