Abstract
In distributed simulation, there is no uniform physical clock. And delay cannot be estimated because of jitter. So simulation time synchronization is essential for the event consistency among nodes. This paper investigates time synchronization algorithms over large-scale distributed nodes, analyzes LBTS (lower bound time stamp) computation model described in IEEE HLA standard, and then presents a grouped LBTS model. In fact, there is a default premise for existing algorithms that control packets must be delivered via reliable transportation. Although, a theorem of time synchronization message’s reliability is proposed, which proves that only those control messages that constrain time advance need reliability. It breaks out the default premise for reliability. Then multicast is introduced into the transmission of control messages, and algorithm MCTS (multi-node coordination time synchronization) is proposed based on multicast. MCTS not only promotes the time advance efficiency, but also reduces the occupied network bandwidth. Experiment results demonstrate that the algorithm is better than others in both time advance speed and occupied network bandwidth. Its time advance speed is about 50 times per second when there are 1000 nodes, approximately equal to that of similar systems when there are 100 nodes.
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Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 60603084) and the Hi-Tech Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2006AA01Z331)
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Zhao, Q., Zhou, Z. & Lü, F. Algorithm of simulation time synchronization over large-scale nodes. Sci. China Ser. F-Inf. Sci. 51, 1239–1255 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-008-0118-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-008-0118-x