Abstract
We explored the joint effect of synchronization window and offset/drift mode selection on the time synchronization of linear wireless sensor networks (LWSNs). Recent advances in the field along with the availability of capable hardware led to adoption of LWSNs in diverse areas like monitoring of roads, pipelines, and tunnels. The linear topology applications are susceptible to single point of failure; therefore, energy efficient operation of LWSNs is even more important than the traditional WSNs. To address the challenge, we investigate the time synchronization mode selection for the optimum operation of a multi-hop and low-overhead LWSN. We investigate two modes of synchronization: synchronization by using only offset and synchronization by using offset in addition to the clock drift. Furthermore, we investigate the effects of synchronization window size. Our experimental results reveal that computation of offset alone for smaller window sizes and resynchronization periods is sufficient in achieving acceptable degree of synchronization.
Highlights
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consists of a plurality of sensor nodes capable of conveying the data they acquire from the environment towards a base station [1]
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: In section 2, we review the literature for related work and introduce our take on Linear wireless sensor networks (LWSN) as well as some evaluation techniques
Numerous synchronization techniques have been proposed throughout the literature but no studies have been carried out on the determination of optimal synchronization parameters for relatively short resynchronization intervals which are frequently experienced in practical field deployments of LWSNs
Summary
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consists of a plurality of sensor nodes capable of conveying the data they acquire from the environment towards a base station [1]. Considering our model of LWSN topology where the nodes are allowed to communicate by preserving the hierarchical order (i.e., with immediate parent and child), the traditional distributed WSN architectures become inefficient This hierarchical setup introduces longer delays between nodes along with other restrictions [9] compared to mesh, star, and hybrid topologies where a broadcast beacon can arrive at any child node within the single hop neighbourhood of a transmitting node. The complex nature of the problem to be solved and demanding system requirements lead to the development of numerous synchronization algorithms In this context, several accurate time synchronization methods have been proposed for WSNs [10,11,12,13], in general, and for LWSNs [14, 15], in particular. A broadcast mechanism was utilized to estimate the time in [15] which is unfeasible in our context as described above
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