一种温度自适应无线传感网络时间同步方法

无线传感器网络节点中的廉价晶振极易受到温度、电压、湿度等工作环境因素的影响.节点晶振的这一特性,为室外大规模无线传感器网络时间同步技术带来了两方面的挑战:(1) 过高的通信开销;(2) 精度与能耗之间的不平衡.针对以上问题,提出了一种基于温度感知的、自适应的无线传感器网络时间同步算法.该算法能够依赖本地温度信息对节点时间频偏进行估计及补偿,在保证算法同步精度的同时,降低了网络通信开销.除此之外,提出一种动态同步周期调节机制,使得算法能够根据当前环境温度变化情况对节点同步周期进行动态调节,从而达到了能耗与精度之间的平衡.大量仿真实验结果表明:所提出的时间同步算法可将通信能耗降低至传统同步算法的10%;且在环境温度不断变化的情况下,80%的频偏估计值其误差小于0.5ppm.故,所提出的时间同步方法能够有效地适用于室外环境下部署的大规模无线传感器网络.

Temperature-Adaptive Time Synchronization for Wireless Sensor Networks

The low-cost crystal oscillators in wireless sensor networks are prone to be affected by their working conditions such as temperature, voltage, and humidity. Such problem brings two key challenges for time synchronization in wireless sensor networks (WSNs): Excessive communication overhead and the trade-off between accuracy and cost. This paper introduces a novel environment-adaptive time synchronization approach that enables nodes to estimate their clock skew by exploiting temperature information. The approach can substantially reduce communication overhead since clock skew estimation mostly relies on local information. In addition, this work proposes an environmental-adaptive interval adjustment scheme for duty-cycled clock calibration, which provides a convenient trade-off between the timing accuracy and the energy efficiency.