A global time synchronization scheme for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

All the clocks in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) need to have approximately the same reading at a global time point, irrespective of their relative distance in order that a sensor system with global clock may be capable of coordinated operation and data synthesis for future predictions. In this paper, we propose a fast asynchronous diffusion (FAD) scheme in order to improve the performance of the localized and fully distributed asynchronous diffusion method, which achieves global synchronization by spreading the local synchronization information to the entire system. We present the simulation results for the FAD scheme and asynchronous diffusion method and show that FAD scheme converges faster than the asynchronous diffusion method. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.