Dual time synchronisation method for wireless sensor networks

Author

Fuqiang Wang ; Changbin Yu ; Xiaoming Wu ; Yifan Hu

Author_Institution

Shandong Comput. Sci. Center, Nat. Supercomput. Center in Jinan) & Shandong Provincial Key Lab. of Comput. Networks, Jinan, China

Volume

51

Issue

2

fYear

2015

fDate

1 22 2015

Firstpage

179

Lastpage

181

Abstract

Time synchronisation plays an important role in time division multiple access (TDMA) wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Existing time synchronisation methods suffer from cumulative time error and the imbalance of time synchronisation precision, and those factors bring fluctuations to nodes´ time and will become worse with the increase of hops, inducing more unstable communication links for sensor nodes. A dual time synchronisation method (DTSM) for WSNs is introduced, which is endowed with the maintenance of two running time sources per node, one for its parent and the other for its sons. This method eliminates the time fluctuations among nodes especially for the nodes with greater hops, so as to obtain more stable links for large-scale networks. This method is implemented on the SCSC-RFA1 platform and the results show its validity.

Keywords

fluctuations; radio links; synchronisation; time division multiple access; wireless sensor networks; SCSC-RFA1 platform; TDMA; WSN; cumulative time error; dual time synchronisation precision method; greater hops; large-scale networks; running time sources; sensor nodes; time division multiple access; time fluctuation elimination; unstable communication links; wireless sensor networks;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electronics Letters

Publisher

iet

ISSN

0013-5194

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/el.2014.3260

Filename

7014492