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Ratio-based time synchronization protocol in wireless sensor networks

Published: 01 September 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Time synchronization plays a key role in the wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Time synchronization is realized by those messages that are time-stamped. But there are several delay times during transmission after time stamping. Most of them are uncertain and contribute directly to synchronization error. The uncertainties include send time, channel access time, transmission time, and receive time. In addition to the uncertainties, clock drift is also a main source of time synchronization error. In this paper, we present a time synchronization protocol that can be applied in the multi-hop WSNs. The proposed protocol estimates the clock drift between two nodes to keep them synchronized for duration after once synchronizing. It uses lower communication overhead and establishes more robust synchronization situations for all nodes in the network. By periodical re-synchronization, the un-synchronization conditions such as nodes failures or topology change can be easily overcome. We implement our protocol in the Berkeley MICAz platform. The experimenting scenarios are 5-node and 18-node multi-hop topologies, and the re-synchronization periods are 30-second and 300-second. The experiment results show that the average synchronization errors of all nodes run with our protocol are ranged within several micro-seconds which are better than the previous protocol.

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  1. Ratio-based time synchronization protocol in wireless sensor networks

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    Published In

    cover image Telecommunications Systems
    Telecommunications Systems  Volume 39, Issue 1
    September 2008
    58 pages

    Publisher

    Kluwer Academic Publishers

    United States

    Publication History

    Published: 01 September 2008

    Author Tags

    1. Clock drift
    2. Time synchronization
    3. Wireless sensor networks

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    • (2023)A Survey on Clock Synchronization in the Industrial InternetJournal of Computer Science and Technology10.1007/s11390-023-2908-438:1(146-165)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2023
    • (2018)Event signature extraction and traffic modeling in WSNsTelecommunications Systems10.1007/s11235-013-9806-y55:4(513-523)Online publication date: 29-Dec-2018
    • (2014)Multi-phase correlator-based realistic clock synchronization for IEEE 802.15.4 networksTelecommunications Systems10.1007/s11235-013-9798-755:3(377-386)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2014

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