High-Precision Clock Synchronization Algorithm for General Aviation Swarms
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Affiliation:

1.School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100081, China;2.Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, United Kingdom

Clc Number:

V241.5;TN911.3

Fund Project:

Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities;National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 62471018).

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    Abstract:

    High-precision clock synchronization is a fundamental technology enabling collaborative functions such as distributed sensing, formation control, and data fusion in general aviation swarms. However, in high-dynamic maneuvering scenarios, traditional round-trip time (RTT) synchronization methods suffer from significant accuracy degradation due to the coupling effects of relative motion-induced Doppler shifts and stochastic unequal reply time (URT) delays within airborne nodes. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel RTT clock synchronization algorithm that integrates relative-velocity compensation with a hybrid data-driven error correction mechanism. First, a kinematic model considering radial relative velocity is established to explicitly correct propagation delays caused by node mobility. Building on this, a batch-estimation-based delay modeling strategy is introduced. By extracting statistical features from multi-cycle timing data, this method calculates the equivalent processing delay sensitivity to eliminate systematic URT deviations. Furthermore, to address non-linear clock frequency drifts and complex environmental noise that traditional linear filters cannot resolve, a cascaded time-keeping architecture is developed. This architecture combines a Kalman filter (KF) for real-time state recursion with a Back-Propagation (BP) neural network for residual prediction. The BP network utilizes a lightweight topology to learn and compensate for non-linear errors based on inputs such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and historical residuals. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations are conducted across continuous parameter spaces, including relative velocities up to 2 000 m/s and SNRs ranging from 4 dB to 20 dB. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves superior robustness and accuracy. Specifically, under strong URT interference (80 ns), the synchronization error remains stable below 0.25 ns. In low-SNR environments (4 dB), the root mean square error (RMSE) is controlled at approximately 0.2 ns, which represents a nearly tenfold improvement compared to the baseline.

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CHEN Yu, HAN Tengfei, YANG Peng, XIONG Zehui, CAO Xianbin. High-Precision Clock Synchronization Algorithm for General Aviation Swarms[J]. Journal of Data Acquisition and Processing,2026,(1):89-108.

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History
  • Received:November 13,2025
  • Revised:January 03,2026
  • Adopted:
  • Online: March 01,2026
  • Published:
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