Clock Synchronization in Large-Scale Systems
Clock synchronization is of paramount importance in large-scale systems. Availability of an absolute time reference is in fact necessary for the agents to correctly cooperate and coordinate to achieve their tasks.
This thesis is concerned with clocks syncronization within the more general framework of synchronization of large-scale systems. Recently, this problem has been solved in some ideal cases, such as when all the clocks have the same skew. The goal is to extend these results to more realistic scenarios, either making use of input/output techinuqes such as the IQC theory, or employing stochastic protocols.
The ideal candidate has a strong background in Control Theory and Probability Theory, and possibly in Functional Anaylsis. S/He will face the state-of-the-art of algorithms and protocols for synchronization of multi-agent systems, and will develop novel models and novel algorithms for clock synchronization. For students who are interested in actual implementation, it is also possible to test the algorithms in the INRIA-Lille Testbed (http://www.senslab.info/).