Consensus Clock Synchronization for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are emerging as a valuable tool in many fields of science and industry. Time synchronization is an important issue for WSN's due to the collaborative and distributed nature of the tasks they perform. This paper describes a new technique for clock synchronization in WSNs called consensus clock synchronization that provides internal synchronization to a virtual consensus clock. It is sensitive to the limited resources available to sensor nodes and is robust to many of the challenges faced in dynamic ad-hoc networks. Simulations are presented to analyse the effectiveness of the synchronization protocol in a mesh network.