Title: Extensible time synchronisation protocol for wireless sensor networks

Authors: Fuqiang Wang; Xiaoming Wu; Yinglong Wang; Peng Zeng; Yang Xiao

Addresses: Shandong Computer Science Center (National Supercomputer Center in Jinan), Shandong Academy of Sciences and Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Computer Networks, Jinan, 250014, China ' College of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266061, China; Shandong Computer Science Center (National Supercomputer Center in Jinan), Shandong Academy of Sciences and Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Computer Networks, Jinan, 250014, China ' College of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266061, China ' Laboratory of Industrial Control Network and System, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, China ' Department of Computer Science, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0290, USA

Abstract: One important aspect in many applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is time synchronisation. There are still some problems to be solved for time synchronisation, such as error and imbalance of time synchronisation precision, causing the fluctuations among nodes' time and being even worse for those with a larger number of hops, producing unstable communication links for the network. In this paper, we introduce an extensible time synchronisation protocol (ETSP) for WSNs and nodes get synchronised through time stamps from the root node directly or indirectly. We improve the least square method for linear regression to get better performance of time drift and spread the time information from the root node to the whole network. The proposed method reduces fluctuations in terms of time among nodes especially for the nodes far from the root, enhancing stability in large-scale networks. Simulation and experimental results show good performance of our method.

Keywords: WSNs; wireless sensor networks; time synchronisation; cumulative time error; uneven distribution; least squares; linear regression; network stability; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2017.080662

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2017 Vol.23 No.1, pp.29 - 39

Received: 16 Jul 2016
Accepted: 16 Jul 2016
Published online: 01 Dec 2016 *

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