ChronoSync: A Decentralized Chronometer Synchronization Protocol for Multi-Agent Systems
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866912312714067968 |
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| author | Zegers, Federico M. Phillips, Sean |
| author_facet | Zegers, Federico M. Phillips, Sean |
| contents | This work presents a decentralized time synchronization algorithm for multi-agent systems. Each agent possesses two clocks, a hardware clock that is perturbed by environmental phenomena (e.g., temperature, humidity, pressure, g forces, etc.) and a steerable software clock that inherits the perturbations affecting the hardware clock. Under these disturbances and the independent time kept by the hardware clocks, our consensus-based controller enables all agents to steer their software-defined clocks into practical synchronization while achieving a common user-defined clock drift. Furthermore, we treat the drift of each hardware clock as an unknown parameter, which our algorithm can accurately estimate. The coupling of the agents is modeled by a connected, undirected, and static graph. However, each agent possesses a timer mechanism that determines when to broadcast a sample of its software time and update its own software-time estimate. Hence, communication between agents can be directed, intermittent, and asynchronous. The closed-loop dynamics of the ensemble is modeled using a hybrid system, where a Lyapunov-based stability analysis demonstrates that a set encoding the time synchronization and clock drift estimation objectives is globally practically exponentially stable. The performance suggested by the theoretical development is confirmed in simulation. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_04347 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | ChronoSync: A Decentralized Chronometer Synchronization Protocol for Multi-Agent Systems Zegers, Federico M. Phillips, Sean Systems and Control This work presents a decentralized time synchronization algorithm for multi-agent systems. Each agent possesses two clocks, a hardware clock that is perturbed by environmental phenomena (e.g., temperature, humidity, pressure, g forces, etc.) and a steerable software clock that inherits the perturbations affecting the hardware clock. Under these disturbances and the independent time kept by the hardware clocks, our consensus-based controller enables all agents to steer their software-defined clocks into practical synchronization while achieving a common user-defined clock drift. Furthermore, we treat the drift of each hardware clock as an unknown parameter, which our algorithm can accurately estimate. The coupling of the agents is modeled by a connected, undirected, and static graph. However, each agent possesses a timer mechanism that determines when to broadcast a sample of its software time and update its own software-time estimate. Hence, communication between agents can be directed, intermittent, and asynchronous. The closed-loop dynamics of the ensemble is modeled using a hybrid system, where a Lyapunov-based stability analysis demonstrates that a set encoding the time synchronization and clock drift estimation objectives is globally practically exponentially stable. The performance suggested by the theoretical development is confirmed in simulation. |
| title | ChronoSync: A Decentralized Chronometer Synchronization Protocol for Multi-Agent Systems |
| topic | Systems and Control |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.04347 |