Analysis of adaptive multi-hop time synchronization in large wireless sensor networks

Time synchronization in wireless sensor networks is important for sensing services that require clock accuracy but use sensors without accurate hardware clocks. Pairwise synchronization is a common technique for two nodes to synchronize their clocks; a leading protocol that extends it across a larger network is AMTS. The challenge with AMTS and other protocols is that synchronization may incur significant communication overhead and more importantly reduce battery lifetime. Although AMTS has been analyzed with small networks, in this paper we analyze its performance in chain, grid and tree topology networks, identifying the trade off between synchronization period and energy consumption