A testbed validated simple time synchronization protocol for clustered wireless sensor networks for IoT

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are set to play an important role in the Internet of Things (IoT). WSNs are deployed for many IoT applications like Smart-Street Lighting, Smart-Grid, etc. Time Synchronization Protocol (TSP) is an important protocol in WSNs and it is used for many of its operations. Most of the existing TSPs for WSNs are simulation-based works, which do not fully prove their effectiveness for WSNs. Further, the Line-of-Sight (LOS) conditions in which the WSN nodes are deployed can significantly affect the performance of these TSPs. However, most of the existing protocols neither talk about the LOS conditions in which these protocols were tested nor prove their effectiveness for different LOS conditions. To address these aspects, a synchronization protocol for cluster-based WSNs called a Simple Hierarchical Algorithm for Time Synchronization (H-SATS) has been proposed in this work and its performance is tested on a densely deployed large-sized WSN testbed in different LOS conditions. Further, H-SATS has been compared with the traditional regression-based method, which is the core synchronization scheme for different synchronization protocols in clustered WSNs. Experiments show that H-SATS outperforms the regression method in terms of synchronization accuracy to a maximum of 26.7% for a 30-node network.

Keywords

Cluster-based topology WSN line-of-sight (LOS) conditions non-line-of-sight (NLOS) condition time synchronization protocol wireless sensor networks (WSN)

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Elsts ,

Duquennoy ,

Fafoutis ,

Oikonomou ,

Piechocki , and

Craddock , Microsecond-accuracy time synchronization using the IEEE 802.15.4 TSCH protocol, Proceedings of 41st Conference on Local Computer Networks Workshops (LCN Workshops), 2016, pp. 156–164.

A. Milenkovic,

Otto and

Jovanov , Wireless sensor networks for personal health monitoring: Issues and an implementation, Computer Communications29(13) (2006), 2521–2533.

A. Zanella,

Bui ,

Castellani ,

Vangelista and

Zorzi , Internet of things for smart cities, IEEE Internet of Things1(1) (2014), 22–32.

Etzlinger ,

Wymeersch and

Springer , Cooperative synchronization in wireless networks, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing62(11) (2014), 2837–2849.

D. Bartel,

Etzlinger and

Springer , Distributed clock synchronization and ranging in time-variant wireless networks, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP),2014, pp. 5744–5748.

Djenouri and

Bagaa , Synchronization protocols and implementation issues in wireless sensor networks: A review, IEEE Systems Journal10(2) (2016), 617–627.

D.L.

Mills , Precision synchronization of computer network clocks, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review24(2) (1994), 28–43.

F.H.

El-Fouly ,

R.A.

Ramadan ,

M.I.

Mahmoud and

Dessouky , Resource aware and reliable data reporting algorithm for object tracking in WSNs, Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems31(1) (2016), 99–113.

Sivrikaya and

Yener , Time synchronization in sensor networks: A survey, IEEE Network18(4) (2004), 45–50.

10.

G.S.S.

Chalapathi ,

Manekar ,

Chamola ,

K.R.

Anu-pama and

Gurunarayanan , Hardware validated efficient and simple Time Synchronization protocol for clustered WSN, Proc of IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON), 2016, pp. 2162–2166.

11.

Werner-Allen ,

Johnson ,

Ruiz ,

Lees and

Welsh , Monitoring volcanic eruptions with a wireless sensor network, Proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Wireless Sensor Networks, 2005, pp. 108–120.

12.

H. Ghayvat,

Mukhopadhyay ,

Gui and

Suryadevara , WSN-and IOT-based smart homes and their extension to smart buildings, Sensors15(5) (2015), 10350–10379.

13.

I.S.H.

MartÃ-nez ,

I.P.O.J.

Salcedo and

I.B.S.R.

Daza , IoT application of WSN on 5G infrastructure, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC), 2017, pp. 1–6.

14.

Elson ,

Girod and

Estrin , Fine-grained network time synchronization using reference broadcasts, SIGOPS Operating Systems Review 36(SI) (2002), 147–163.

15.

Wu ,

Zhang ,

Bai and

Sun , Cluster-based consensus time synchronization for wireless sensor networks, IEEE Sensors15(3) (2015), 1404–1413.

16.

JN5179 datahseet. https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/JN517X.pdf

17.

Krishnamurthy ,

Adler ,

Buonadonna ,

Chhabra ,

Flanigan ,

Kushalnagar ,

Nachman and

Yarvis , Design and deployment of Industrial sensor networks: Experiences from a semiconductor plant and the North sea, Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys '05), 2005, pp. 64–75.

18.

Schenato and

Fiorentin , Average timesynch: A consensus-based protocol for clock synchronization in wireless sensor networks, Automatica47(9) (2011), 1878–1886.

19.

Lotus WSN node-datasheet. https://www.memsic.com/userfiles/files/Datasheets/WSN/6020-0705-01_A_LOTUS.pdf

20.

M.F.

Othman and

Shazali , Wireless sensor network applications: A study in Environment monitoring system, Procedía Engineering41 (2012), 1204–1210.

21.

Jabbarifar ,

A.S.

Sendi ,

Pedram ,

Dehghan and

Dagenais , L-SYNC: Larger Degree Clustering Based TimeSynchronisation for Wireless Sensor Network, Proceedings of the Eighth ACIS Int. Conference on Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications, 2010, pp. 171–178.

22.

M.L.

Sichitiu and

Veerarittiphan , Simple, accurate time synchronization for wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking (WCNC 2003), 2003, pp. 1266–1273.

23.

Mamun-Or-Rashid ,

C.S.

Hong and

C.-H.

In , Passive cluster based clock synchronization in sensor network,Proceedings of the Advanced Industrial Conference on Telecommunications/Service Assurance with Partial and Intermittent Resources Conference/E-Learning on Telecommunications Workshop (AICT/SAPIR/ELETE’05), 2005, pp. 340–345.

24.

Yan ,

Liu ,

Zhao ,

Liu ,

Chen ,

Yu and

Zhang , Field microclimate monitoring system based on wireless sensor network, Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems35(2) (2018), 1325–1337.

25.

Maróti ,

Kusy ,

Simon and

Lédeczi , The flooding time Synchronization protocol, Proc of the II Intl Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, 2004, pp. 39–49.

26.

Q.M.

Chaudhari ,

Serpedin and

Qaraqe , On maximum likelihood estimation of clock offset and skew in networks with exponential delays, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing56(4) (2008), 1685–1697.

27.

Morello ,

S.C.

Mukhopadhyay ,

Liu ,

Slomovitz and

S.R.

Samantaray , Advances on sensing technologies for smart cities and power grids: Areview, IEEE Sensors17(23) (2017), 7596–7610.

28.

S. Ganeriwal,

Kumar and

M.B.

Srivastava , Timing-sync Protocol for Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys ’03), 2003, pp. 138–149.

29.

Nazemi Gelyan ,

A.N.

Eghbali ,

Roustapoor ,

S.A.

Yahyavi Firouz Abadi and

Dehghan , SLTP: Scalable lightweight time synchronization protocol for wireless sensor network, Mobile Ad-Hoc and Sensor Networks (2007), 536–547.

30.

Telosb-datasheet. http://www.memsic.com/userfiles/files/Datasheets/WSN/telosb_datasheet.pdf

31.

W.R.

Heinzelman ,

Chandrakasan and

Balakrish-nan , Energy-efficient communication protocol for wireless microsensor networks, Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on SystemSciences, 2000, p. 10.

32.

Z. Song,

M.T.

Lazarescu ,

Tomasi ,

Lavagno and

M.A.

Spirito , High-Level Internet of Things Applications Development Using Wireless Sensor Networks, Springer International Publishing, 2014, pp. 75–109.

33.

Z. Wang,

Zeng ,

Zhou ,

Li and

Wang , Cluster-based maximum consensus time synchronization for industrial wireless sensor networks, Sensors17(1) (2017), 141.1–141.16.