Optimal consensus‐based clock synchronisation algorithm in wireless sensor network by selective averaging. (1st June 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Panigrahi, Niranjan; Khilar, Pabitra Mohan
• Is Part Of: IET wireless sensor systems. Volume 5:Number 3(2015)
• Page Start: 166
• Page End: 174
• Publication Date: 2015-06-01
• Subjects: wireless sensor networks -- synchronisation; optimal consensus based clock synchronisation algorithm -- wireless sensor network -- WSN -- root node failure problem -- distributed time synchronisation algorithm -- initial clock values -- selective pairwise averaging approach -- linear message complexity -- random pairwise average time synchronisation protocol; Wireless sensor networks -- Periodicals; 681.2
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-wss.2013.0102
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2043-6386

Abstract

Abstract : Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have received much attention in recent years because of its broad area of applications. In the same breadth, it also faces many challenges. Time synchronisation is one of those fundamental and important challenges faced by WSN. Several approaches have been proposed in recent years for time synchronisation. Most of the approaches are based on synchronising to a reference (root) node's time by considering a hierarchical backbone for the network. However, this approach seems to be not purely distributed, higher accumulated synchronisation error for farthest node from the root and subjected to the root node failure problem. In this study, a fully distributed time synchronisation algorithm is proposed which synchronises all nodes' time to a consensus value, that is, an average of all nodes' initial clock values. The algorithm exploits a selective pairwise averaging approach with a linear message complexity of O ( n ), to achieve faster convergence and better synchronisation accuracy than the existing random pairwise average time synchronisation protocol. Simulation results show that almost 50% improvement is achieved in convergence speed, measured in terms of number of iterations, and nearly 30% improvement in total synchronisation error.