Assuring resilient time synchronization

In many distributed and pervasive systems the clocks of nodes are required to be synchronized to a unique global time. Due to unpredictable system and environment characteristics, the distance of a local clock from global time is a variable factor very hard to predict. Systems usually adopt measures to guarantee an upper bound on such distance from global time that are very often quite far from typical execution scenarios and thus are of practical little use. As a consequence, while in many circumstances reliable information on the actual distance from global time would improve system behaviour, unfortunately such information is usually not available. In this paper we propose the Reliable and Self-Aware Clock (R&SAClock), a low-intrusive software service that is able to compute a conservative estimation of distance from an external global time. R&SAClock acts as a new clock that couples information gained from synchronization mechanisms with information collected from the local clock to provide both current time and a self-adaptive reliable estimation of distance from global time. This paper describes the R&SAClock as a system component: we define its main functions, services and time-related mechanisms. Finally details of an implementation of the R&SAClock for the NTP synchronization mechanism and Linux OS are shown.