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Low-complexity time synchronization for energy-constrained wireless sensor networks: Dual-Clock delayed-message approach

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Abstract

Due to the ability of sensor nodes to collaborate, time synchronization is essential for many sensor network operations. With the aid of hardware capabilities, this work presents a novel time synchronization method, which employs a dual-clock delayed-message approach, for energy-constrained wireless sensor networks (WSNs). To conserve WSN energy, this study adopts the flooding time synchronization scheme based on one-way timing messages. Via the proposed approach, the maximum-likelihood (ML) estimation of time parameters, such as clock skew and clock offset, can be obtained for time synchronization. Additionally, with the proposed scheme, the clock skew and offset estimation problem will be transformed into a problem independent of random delay and propagation delay. The ML estimation of link propagation delay, which can be used for localization systems in the proposed scenario, is also obtained. In addition to good performance, the proposed method has low complexity.

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Notes

  1. In this paper, the packet is the same as the message unless otherwise stated.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported in part by the grant MOST 104-2221-E-006-117, Taiwan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, 701, Taiwan, Republic of China

    Yao-Ren Lee & Wen-Long (William) Chin

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  1. Yao-Ren Lee
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  2. Wen-Long (William) Chin
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Correspondence to Wen-Long (William) Chin.

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Lee, YR., Chin, WL.(. Low-complexity time synchronization for energy-constrained wireless sensor networks: Dual-Clock delayed-message approach. Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl. 10, 887–896 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-016-0437-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-016-0437-4

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