A SYNCHRONIZATION ALGORITHM FOR DISTRIBUTED MULTIMEDIA ENVIRONMENTS

Network synchronization plays a significant role in transmitting multi media objects over computer networks. Even packets from a single chann el must be synchronized due to the problems in a packet switching envi ronment, such as network jitter, frequency, and time offsets. We prese nt an algorithm that determines the set of packets generated periodica lly by various participants arriving at a node. The basic advantage of the proposed algorithm is that the receiver estimates the reference t imes (expected arrival times of the packets) and achieves synchronizat ion, without knowledge of the packet delays. The accuracy is improved and the complexity is reduced by predicting the time/frequency offsets between the clocks at the source and the mixer. The error is calculat ed by the Chernoff bound, demonstrated by simulation, and shown to be acceptable in practical applications.