Embodiments of the invention provide a method to accommodate clock drift and guard time in a centralized fashion. In one embodiment, a device is adapted to communicate. Clocks are synchronized using beacon or/and acknowledgement frames. A centralized guard time is calculated between two neighboring allocation intervals. The centralized guard time accounts for clock drift during a nominal synchronization interval. An interval at least as long as the centralized guard time is provisioned between two neighboring allocation intervals. One or more frames are transmitted within the allocation intervals.