TY - JOUR
T1 - On the practical implementation of propagation delay and clock skew compensated high-precision time synchronization schemes with resource-constrained sensor nodes in multi-hop wireless sensor networks
AU - Huan, Xintao
AU - Kim, Kyeong Soo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2020/1/15
Y1 - 2020/1/15
N2 - In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), implementing an energy-efficient, high-precision time synchronization scheme on resource-constrained sensor nodes is challenging but essential to long-running applications for accurate environment monitoring and detection of important events, often covering a large area in the field. Our investigation of the practical implementation on a real testbed of the state-of-the-art WSN time synchronization scheme based on the asynchronous source clock frequency recovery and the reverse two-way message exchange, which can compensate for both propagation delay and clock skew for higher precision and energy efficiency, reveals that its performance on battery-powered, low-complexity sensor nodes is not up to that predicted from simulation experiments due to the limited precision floating-point arithmetic of sensor nodes. Noting the lower computational capability of typical sensor nodes and its impact on time synchronization, we propose an asymmetric high-precision time synchronization scheme that can provide high-precision time synchronization even with resource-constrained sensor nodes in multi-hop WSNs. In the proposed scheme, all synchronization-related computations are done at the head node equipped with abundant computing and power resources, while the sensor nodes are responsible for timestamping only to further release their computational burdens. Experimental results with a testbed based on TelosB motes running TinyOS demonstrate that the proposed time synchronization scheme can avoid time synchronization errors resulting from the single-precision floating-point arithmetic of the resource-constrained sensor nodes and achieve microsecond-level time synchronization accuracy in multi-hop WSNs.
AB - In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), implementing an energy-efficient, high-precision time synchronization scheme on resource-constrained sensor nodes is challenging but essential to long-running applications for accurate environment monitoring and detection of important events, often covering a large area in the field. Our investigation of the practical implementation on a real testbed of the state-of-the-art WSN time synchronization scheme based on the asynchronous source clock frequency recovery and the reverse two-way message exchange, which can compensate for both propagation delay and clock skew for higher precision and energy efficiency, reveals that its performance on battery-powered, low-complexity sensor nodes is not up to that predicted from simulation experiments due to the limited precision floating-point arithmetic of sensor nodes. Noting the lower computational capability of typical sensor nodes and its impact on time synchronization, we propose an asymmetric high-precision time synchronization scheme that can provide high-precision time synchronization even with resource-constrained sensor nodes in multi-hop WSNs. In the proposed scheme, all synchronization-related computations are done at the head node equipped with abundant computing and power resources, while the sensor nodes are responsible for timestamping only to further release their computational burdens. Experimental results with a testbed based on TelosB motes running TinyOS demonstrate that the proposed time synchronization scheme can avoid time synchronization errors resulting from the single-precision floating-point arithmetic of the resource-constrained sensor nodes and achieve microsecond-level time synchronization accuracy in multi-hop WSNs.
KW - Asymmetric time synchronization
KW - Multi-hop wireless sensor networks
KW - Reverse two-way message exchange
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074761964&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.comnet.2019.106959
DO - 10.1016/j.comnet.2019.106959
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85074761964
SN - 1389-1286
VL - 166
JO - Computer Networks
JF - Computer Networks
M1 - 106959
ER -