Abstract
Time synchronization is crucial for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in performing a number of fundamental operations such as data coordination, power management, security, and localization. The Pairwise Broadcast Synchronization (PBS) protocol was recently proposed to minimize the number of timing messages required for global network synchronization, which enables the design of highly energy-efficient WSNs. However, PBS requires all nodes in the network to lie within the communication ranges of two leader nodes, a condition which might not be available in some applications. This paper proposes an extension of PBS to the more general class of sensor networks. Based on the hierarchical structure of the network, an energy-efficient pair selection algorithm is proposed to select the best pairwise synchronization sequence to reduce the overall energy consumption. It is shown that in a multicluster networking environment, PBS requires a far less number of timing messages than other well-known synchronization protocols and incurs no loss in synchronization accuracy. Moreover, the proposed scheme presents significant energy savings for densely deployed WSNs.
Highlights
A huge attention has been paid to wireless sensor networks (WSNs) as fundamental infrastructures for future ubiquitous communication environments [1, 2]
A novel time synchronization protocol has been proposed to reduce the overall energy consumption in synchronization based on the receiver-only synchronization approach
In the Pairwise Broadcast Synchronization (PBS) protocol, a number of sensor nodes can be synchronized by only overhearing time message exchanges between pairs of nodes
Summary
A huge attention has been paid to wireless sensor networks (WSNs) as fundamental infrastructures for future ubiquitous communication environments [1, 2]. For synchronization protocols based on the two-way message exchanges like TPSN, a family of energy-efficient clock offset and skew (frequency offset) estimators was recently proposed in [8]. This paper studies a multicluster extension of PBS based on the level hierarchy of the network and proposes an energy efficient pair selection algorithm to achieve global synchronization. Node B can be synchronized to Node P using the results in (1), and all the other nodes in the common coverage region in Figure 1 can be simultaneously synchronized to Node P without any additional timing message transmissions, saving a significant amount of energy Note that it was shown in [15] that the synchronization accuracy of PBS is exactly the same as the RBS protocol. The benefit of PBS over RBS, TPSN, and FTSP is clear and huge in terms of energy consumption
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