E2DTS: An energy efficiency distributed time synchronization algorithm for underwater acoustic mobile sensor networks

Time synchronization plays an important role in wireless sensor network applications and energy conservation. In this paper, we focus on the need of time synchronization in underwater acoustic mobile sensor networks (UAMSNs). Several time synchronization algorithms have been carried out in this issue. But most of them are proposed for RF-based wireless sensor networks, which assume that the propagation delay is negligible. In UAMSNs, the assumption about rapid communication is incorrect because the communication is primarily via acoustic channel, so the propagation speed is much slower than RF. Furthermore, the propagation delay in underwater environment is time-varying due to the nodes’ mobility. We present an energy efficiency distributed time synchronization algorithm (called “E2DTS”) for those underwater acoustic node mobility networks. In E2DTS, both clock skew and offset are estimated. We investigate the relationship between time-varying propagation delay and nodes mobility, and then estimate the clock skew. At last skew-corrected nodes send local timestamp to beacon node to estimate its clock offset. Through analysis and simulation, we show that it achieves high level time synchronization precision with minimal energy cost.