Energy-efficient clock synchronization using wake-up receivers

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs) it is often required to have a common time basis for all sensor nodes. Due to clock drift it is necessary to re-synchronize the nodes repeatedly to keep the common time basis. But this re-synchronization can be power demanding. We present an energy-efficient approach which can bound the synchronization error to a certain limit. Either duty-cycled transceivers or wake-up receivers (WURs) can be used. Using WURs is the more energy-efficient and robust approach but needs special hardware.