Enhanced IEEE 1588 Time Synchronization Scheme with Variable-Length Packets

The IEEE 1588 is a synchronization standard for packet-based communications, which plays an important role in the small cell networks. However, the performance of the conventional IEEE 1588 synchronization algorithm is affected by the asymmetric link and random delay problems. This paper develops an enhanced IEEE 1588 scheme that uses variablelength packets to mitigate both these problems. The maximum likelihood estimate for the clock offset is derived based on the proposed scheme for two scenarios - Gaussian and exponentially distributed random delays.