An Insight into Time Synchronization Algorithms in IoT

Abstract

Nowadays, Internet of Things (IoT) is a new standard in the area of smart technologies. IoT comprises various kinds of objects, machines, and humans that can interact with each other using various communication technologies such as Wi-Fi, RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification), Bluetooth, NFC (Near-Field Communication), etc. IoT devices need interoperability and communication with each other. In IoT, synchronization is a method of adjusting the internal clock of a device with the clocks of other devices in the network. Time synchronization is required among IoT devices and applications for better communication and resource availability, ordering of events, proper allocation of available resources, and for mutual exclusion. In IoT, the sequence of exchange of signals needs to be maintained for the proper execution of various applications. An objective of this paper is to discuss and analyze time synchronization algorithms that may also be applied to implement effective synchronization among the nodes in IoT applications. There are a set of synchronization algorithms available based on different approaches. The paper presents a comparative study of time synchronization algorithms for IoT.