Low-power high-precision timing hardware for sensor networks
Proceedings of the 7th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems
High-resolution, low-power time synchronization an oxymoron no more
Proceedings of the 9th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks
Accurate clock models for simulating Wireless Sensor Networks
Proceedings of the 3rd International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques
Putting the software radio on a low-calorie diet
Hotnets-IX Proceedings of the 9th ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks
Clock synchronization with deterministic accuracy guarantee
EWSN'11 Proceedings of the 8th European conference on Wireless sensor networks
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Time synchronization in embedded sensor networks is an important service for correlating data between nodes and communication scheduling. While many different approaches to the problem are possible, one major effect of clock frequency difference between nodes, environmental temperature changes, has often been left out of the solution. The common assumption that the temperature is static over a certain period of time is often used as an excuse to assume constant frequency errors in a clock. This assumption forces synchronization protocols to resynchronize too often. While there exists hardware solutions to this problem, their prohibitive high cost and power consumption make them unsuitable for some applications, such as wireless sensor networks. Temperature compensated time synchronization (TCTS) exploits the on-board temperature sensor existing in many sensor network platforms. It uses this temperature sensor to autonomously calibrate the local oscillator and removes effects of environmental temperature changes. This allows a time synchronization protocol to increase its resynchronization period, without loosing synchronization accuracy, and thus saves energy and communication overhead. In addition, TCTS provides a stable clock source when radio communication is impaired. We present the theory behind TCTS, and provide initial results of a simulated comparison of TCTS and the flooding time synchronization protocol.