Non-cooperative versus cooperative approaches for distributed network synchronization

In this paper we compare the so called Pulse Coupled Oscillator (PCO) protocol with an alternative gossiping algorithm, known as Average Consensus protocol, considering the application of decentralized network synchronization. The main difference between the PCO algorithm and the Average Consensus protocol is that the latter is based on the explicit exchange of time-stamps in the payload of packets, which are delivered with contention to the neighbors. The PCO scheme, instead, implicitly encodes the computed state into the transmission time, driving the nodes to transmit packets in synchrony. Our results show clearly how as more nodes tend to transmit at unison, cooperative transmission emerges boosting up the signal level and, therefore, speeding up the algorithm convergence. Conversely, the average consensus protocol, requires increasing energy as the number of nodes increases.