Abstract

The efficiency of the time synchronization service in wireless sensor networks is tightly connected to the design of the radio, the quality of the clocking hardware, and the synchronization algorithm employed. While improvements can be made on all levels of the system, over the last few years most work has focused on the algorithmic level to minimize message exchange and in radio architectures to provide accurate time-stamping mechanisms. Surprisingly, the influences of the underlying clock system and its impact on the overall synchronization accuracy has largely been unstudied.
In this work, we investigate the impact of the clocking subsystem on the time synchronization service and address, in particular, the influence of changes in environmental temperature on clock drift in highly duty-cycled wireless sensor nodes. We also develop formulas that help the system architect choose the optimal resynchronization …

Date

January 1, 1970

Authors

Thomas Schmid, Roy Shea, Zainul Charbiwala, Jonathan Friedman, Mani B Srivastava, HC Young

Journal

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks

Volume

7

Issue

3

Pages

24.1-24.19

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery, One Astor Plaza New York NY 10036-5701 United States