research-article

On the interaction of clocks, power, and synchronization in duty-cycled embedded sensor nodes

Authors:

Zainul Charbiwala,

Jonathan Friedman,

Mani B. Srivastava,

Young H. ChoAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), Volume 7, Issue 3

Article No.: 24, Pages 1 - 19

https://doi.org/10.1145/1807048.1807053

Published: 04 October 2010 Publication History

Abstract

The efficiency of the time synchronization service in wireless sensor networks is tightly connected to the design of the radio, the quality of the clocking hardware, and the synchronization algorithm employed. While improvements can be made on all levels of the system, over the last few years most work has focused on the algorithmic level to minimize message exchange and in radio architectures to provide accurate time-stamping mechanisms. Surprisingly, the influences of the underlying clock system and its impact on the overall synchronization accuracy has largely been unstudied.

In this work, we investigate the impact of the clocking subsystem on the time synchronization service and address, in particular, the influence of changes in environmental temperature on clock drift in highly duty-cycled wireless sensor nodes. We also develop formulas that help the system architect choose the optimal resynchronization period to achieve a given synchronization accuracy. We find that the synchronization accuracy has a two region behavior. In the first region, the synchronization accuracy is limited by quantization error, while int he second region changes in environmental temperature impact the achievable accuracy. We verify our analytic results in simulation and real hardware experiments.

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Cited By

Pérez-Solano JSoriano-Asensi AFelici-Castell SSegura-Garcia J(2024)Improving the precision of time synchronization protocols in ultra-wideband networks estimating the time of flight of the radio signalComputer Communications10.1016/j.comcom.2024.05.006223(44-54)Online publication date: Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2024.05.006
Smeele STyndel SKlump BAlarcón‐Nieto GAplin L(2024)callsync: An R package for alignment and analysis of multi‐microphone animal recordingsEcology and Evolution10.1002/ece3.1138414:5Online publication date: 23-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.11384
Dang FSun XLiu KXu YLiu Y(2023)A Survey on Clock Synchronization in the Industrial InternetJournal of Computer Science and Technology10.1007/s11390-023-2908-438:1(146-165)Online publication date: 31-Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-023-2908-4
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On the interaction of clocks, power, and synchronization in duty-cycled embedded sensor nodes
1. Hardware

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks Volume 7, Issue 3

September 2010

220 pages

ISSN:1550-4859

EISSN:1550-4867

DOI:10.1145/1807048

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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ACM Journals for the Design of Smart and Connected Systems

Publication History

Published: 04 October 2010

Accepted: 01 March 2010

Revised: 01 December 2009

Received: 01 February 2009

Published in TOSN Volume 7, Issue 3

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Cited By

Pérez-Solano JSoriano-Asensi AFelici-Castell SSegura-Garcia J(2024)Improving the precision of time synchronization protocols in ultra-wideband networks estimating the time of flight of the radio signalComputer Communications10.1016/j.comcom.2024.05.006223(44-54)Online publication date: Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2024.05.006
Smeele STyndel SKlump BAlarcón‐Nieto GAplin L(2024)callsync: An R package for alignment and analysis of multi‐microphone animal recordingsEcology and Evolution10.1002/ece3.1138414:5Online publication date: 23-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.11384
Dang FSun XLiu KXu YLiu Y(2023)A Survey on Clock Synchronization in the Industrial InternetJournal of Computer Science and Technology10.1007/s11390-023-2908-438:1(146-165)Online publication date: 31-Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-023-2908-4
Soriano-Asensi APerez Solano JFelici-Castell SSegura-Garcia JFayos-Jordan RNavarro Camba EPinto Jdo Nascimento RFelici-Castell SSamper Zapater J(2022)Comparison of statistical methods for time synchronization between network nodes equipped with UWB transceiversProceedings of the 11th Euro American Conference on Telematics and Information Systems10.1145/3544538.3544669(1-4)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
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Navarro-Modesto ENavarro-Camba ESegura-Garcia JFelici-Castell SPerez-Solano JPinto Jdo Nascimento RFelici-Castell SSamper Zapater J(2022)Further aspects of Stochastic Cooperative BeamformingProceedings of the 11th Euro American Conference on Telematics and Information Systems10.1145/3544538.3544656(1-6)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544538.3544656
Pérez-Solano JFelici-Castell SSoriano-Asensi ASegura-Garcia J(2022)Time synchronization enhancements in wireless networks with ultra wide band communicationsComputer Communications10.1016/j.comcom.2022.01.012186:C(80-89)Online publication date: 15-Mar-2022
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Markolf MZinowsky MKeller JBorys JCillov ASchülke O(2022)Toward Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Lemurs: Using an Affordable Open-Source System to Monitor Phaner Vocal Activity and DensityInternational Journal of Primatology10.1007/s10764-022-00285-z43:3(409-433)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2022
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Yiğitler HBadihi BJäntti R(2020)Overview of Time Synchronization for IoT Deployments: Clock Discipline Algorithms and ProtocolsSensors10.3390/s2020592820:20(5928)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.3390/s20205928
Yildirim KAantjes HPawelczak PMajid A(2019)On the Synchronization of Computational RFIDsIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2018.286987318:9(2147-2159)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2019
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Al-Mekhlafi ZHanapi ZShamsan Saleh A(2019)Firefly-Inspired Time Synchronization Mechanism for Self-Organizing Energy-Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks: A SurveyIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.29352207(115229-115248)Online publication date: 2019
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