Widening the Coverage of Reference Broadcast Infrastructure Synchronization in Wi-Fi Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces DOMINO, an advanced synchronization protocol for Wi-Fi networks that extends coverage beyond single infrastructure, enabling precise time sharing across multiple overlapping networks for industrial applications.

Contribution

The paper presents DOMINO, an evolution of RBIS, which significantly widens synchronization coverage by leveraging boundary clocks in overlapping Wi-Fi networks.

Findings

DOMINO extends synchronization coverage to entire plant areas.

Wireless stations acting as boundary clocks facilitate time propagation.

Improved synchronization accuracy in overlapping Wi-Fi networks.

Abstract

Precise clock synchronization protocols are increasingly used to ensure that all the nodes in a network share the very same time base. They enable several mechanisms aimed at improving determinism at both the application and communication levels, which makes them highly relevant to industrial environments. Reference Broadcast Infrastructure Synchronization (RBIS) is a solution specifically conceived for Wi-Fi that exploits existing beacons and can run on commercial devices. In this paper, an evolution of RBIS is presented, we call DOMINO, whose coverage area is much larger than the single Wi-Fi infrastructure network, potentially including the whole plant. In particular, wireless stations that can see more than one access point at the same time behave as boundary clocks and propagate the reference time across overlapping networks.