Atlantis Press Paper Details: State-Based Synchronization Protocol in Sensor Networks

Some applications of the sensor network require precise time synchronization among local clocks of the sensors. Due to the limited resource in the sensor network, it is not trivial to maintain the said synchronization. In this paper, we propose a novel method, referred to as the state-based synchronization protocol (SBSP) to solve this issue. We create a finite state machine in the SBSP to describe the synchronization actions at each sensor node. Specifically, the SBSP makes use of the ADV, REQ and SYNC packets and the finite state machine to achieve synchronization. We will compare the performance of the proposed protocol against the popular timing-sync protocol for sensor networks (TPSN) and lightweight tree-based synchronization (LTS) through simulations. The SBSP reduces the redundant message exchanges in the TPSN. It is shown that the SBSP saves power with less message exchanges while maintaining better synchronization error.


title:		State-Based Synchronization Protocol in Sensor Networks
publication:		JCIS-2006 Proceedings
part of series:		Advances in Intelligent Systems Research
ISBN:		978-90-78677-01-7
ISSN:		1951-6851
DOI:		doi:10.2991/jcis.2006.41 (how to use a DOI)
author(s):		Shang-Chih Hsu, Wei Yen
corresponding author:		Shang-Chih Hsu
publication date:		October 2006
keywords:		Drift, Sensor Networks, Synchronization Period, Time Synchronization
abstract:		Some applications of the sensor network require precise time synchronization among local clocks of the sensors. Due to the limited resource in the sensor network, it is not trivial to maintain the said synchronization. In this paper, we propose a novel method, referred to as the state-based synchronization protocol (SBSP) to solve this issue. We create a finite state machine in the SBSP to describe the synchronization actions at each sensor node. Specifically, the SBSP makes use of the ADV, REQ and SYNC packets and the finite state machine to achieve synchronization. We will compare the performance of the proposed protocol against the popular timing-sync protocol for sensor networks (TPSN) and lightweight tree-based synchronization (LTS) through simulations. The SBSP reduces the redundant message exchanges in the TPSN. It is shown that the SBSP saves power with less message exchanges while maintaining better synchronization error.
copyright:		© Atlantis Press. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
full text:		JCIS06-CSI-87.pdf (429 K)