Synchronization of pulse-coupled biological oscillators
SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics
Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice
Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice
Decentralized synchronization protocols with nearest neighbor communication
SenSys '04 Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems
Global Clock Synchronization in Sensor Networks
IEEE Transactions on Computers
A survey of energy-efficient scheduling mechanisms in sensor networks
Mobile Networks and Applications
Sensor networks with mobile agents
MILCOM'03 Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE conference on Military communications - Volume I
IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
Energy-centric enabling tecumologies for wireless sensor networks
IEEE Wireless Communications
Energy-constrained modulation optimization
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
Cross-Layer Design for Lifetime Maximization in Interference-Limited Wireless Sensor Networks
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
Fading channels: information-theoretic and communications aspects
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
On the scalability of cooperative time synchronization in pulse-connected networks
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
A scalable synchronization protocol for large scale sensor networks and its applications
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
Time synchronization in sensor networks: a survey
IEEE Network: The Magazine of Global Internetworking
Average time synchronization in wireless sensor networks by pairwise messages
Computer Communications
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
Physical-layer (pulse-coupled) techniques for distributed synchronization in wireless networks are attracting significant attention for their efficiency and scalability. In this paper, the model of pulse-coupled discrete Phase Locked Loops is reviewed and further investigated in two directions. At first, we extend the characterization of (frequency or phase) synchronous states and convergence conditions from homogeneous networks, where all the nodes have the same power constraints, to more general heterogeneous networks. Towards this goal, we build on recent results on algebraic graph theory for generally non-bidirectional graphs, and derive: (i) necessary and sufficient conditions for global synchronization of the network; (ii) closed-form expressions for the asymptotic values of frequency and phases, as a function of the network topology. In the second part of the paper, an application of pulse-coupled synchronization is considered, namely data collection in a sensor network. The energy efficiency of two medium access protocols for data collection from a set of randomly located sensors to an access point is compared: (i) basic ALOHA (which does not require time synchronization among the sensors); (ii) slotted ALOHA, where time synchronization is achieved via pulse-coupled clocks. Analysis shows that the energy spent for maintaining synchronization in slotted ALOHA pays off in terms of total energy consumption with respect to basic ALOHA provided that the number of sensors is sufficiently small. Moreover, the energy gain is proved to depend explicitly on the system load (in terms of packets /s), hardware and topology of the network.