Performance Analysis of a Novel Low-Complexity High-Precision Timing Synchronization Method for Wireless Sensor Networks

Keywords:

Abstract:

<p>In wireless sensor networks, nodes periodically wake
up and sleep in order to reduce their energy consumption. One
challenge in this scenario is how to coordinate the sender and
receiver so that they can wake up and sleep at the same pace to
maintain connectivity. In this paper, we present a synchronization
method that has very low energy consumption overhead yet highprecision
synchronization performance. Different from existing
synchronization methods, it does not need to correct the offsets
and skews of the clocks of nodes in the network for universal
clock alignment which would necessitate frequent communication.
Instead, our proposed method takes advantage of the fact
that the time interval between two transmitted beacons is the
same as the time interval between two received beacons, since
the propagation and coding delay can be assumed to be similar
in these two transmissions. Thus, the receiver and the sender can
be synchronized using their individual clocks. Based on this key
idea, our synchronization method can overcome the offset and
drift issue without modifying the clocks. This paper focuses on
the theoretical analysis to evaluate this proposed method. The
closed form expression of the error limits for our method has
been obtained. Theorectical conclusion shows that our method’s
errors are only dependent on the clock difference ratios and
the cycle measurement noises, and independent of the protocol
parameters. Thus it has a high precision. Also the correctness
of the theoretical analysis has been verified by our experimental
results.</p>