Patent ID: 7480515

Claim:
A method of synchronizing a MAC superframe of a wireless device to a MAC superframe of at least one neighboring device, the wireless device being located within a plurality of other wireless devices, the method comprising: receiving beacons from at least one other device during a superframe of the wireless device; determining a superframe offset for each of the other wireless devices based on timing of the received beacons; determining a corrective delay based on the superframe offsets; inserting the corrective delay within a current superframe of the wireless device; determining a predictive delay by estimating a difference between a frequency of a clock of the wireless device and a frequency of a slowest clock of the other wireless devices within the plurality of devices; inserting the predictive delay within the current superframe; wherein the estimate of the frequency of the slowest clock comprises computing an average over time of the corrective delay; and wherein if the average exceeds a predetermined high-watermark threshold, then the predictive delay is increased.