Efficient time synchronization for wireless sensor networks in an industrial setting

ABSTRACT

This paper outlines an efficient variation of the Flooding Time Synchronization Protocol (FTSP) on real hardware with an IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer. The paper compares the performance of two clock drift estimation techniques: Least Squares Linear Regression and the Kalman filter. In assessing the viability of time synchronization in an industrial setting, our reliance on real hardware gives confidence for the deployment in future products. The concrete result is a high time synchronization accuracy, with an achievable average error of 0.4 μs, and a repetition interval of a few seconds, while using a star network topology.

REFERENCES

• 1: Miklós Maróti , Branislav Kusy , Gyula Simon , Ákos Lédeczi, The flooding time synchronization protocol, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems, November 03-05, 2004, Baltimore, MD, USA [doi>10.1145/1031495.1031501]
• 2: IEEE 802.15.4-2003 specification. http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/download/802.15.4- 2003.pdf
• 3: D. Cox, E. Jovanov, and A. Milenkovic. Time Synchronization for Zigbee Networks. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST '05), pages 135--138, 2005.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS

General Terms:
Algorithms, Experimentation, Performance

Keywords:
clock drift, kalman filter, linear regression, time synchronization, time-stamping