[Tinyos-devel] Re: [Tinyos Core WG] time sync interfaces

[Miklos Maroti]

Hi!

> I expect that timesync protocol implementations in T2 (e.g. FTSP, RBS,
> RITS) wouldn't wire the "standard precision" interfaces, but would work
> directly with the arbitrary precision ones the radio stacks provide. I
> would say that in 90% of the cases applications would wire the above
> protocols instead of the low-level timestamping primitives. For the
> remaining 10%, I don't think it's worth specifying a standard precision
> for the HIL, either.

No. The MAC in most cases will provide a SINGLE over the air precision.
How that is presented to the application developer (as a platform sepcific
precision or a standard one) is a different issue. I think for now we can
have this single patform dependent over the air precision (in almost all
cases 32khz) and have a standard PacketTimeSynch precision (with
32khz). This way 90% of the applications can use the standard interfaces,
and would be completely shielded by changes in the MAC if later we
need to modify the over-the-air layout. Anyone how wants to experiment
with higher over-the-air precision now can rewire the MAC layer and
provide the native over-te-air precision PacketTimeSynch which can be
converted to the standard 32khz PacketTimeSynch with a simple
wrapper.

The applications need to be shileded, we need a standard interface
that MUST be provided by all platforms. The implementation details
are details.

Miklos