Improved Time Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Time synchronization is an essential problem for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The synchronization algorithms presented in were based on the constant-rate clock model, thus could not compensate the clock drift. In this paper, based on the more reasonable bound-drift clock model and, we propose an improved time synchronization algorithm. We develop a new method to estimate the clock drift and the clock offset. Moreover, we propose approaches which can achieve the compensation of the drift and the correction of the offset at the same time, and which avoid the time discontinuity which is a prevalent drawback of many synchronization algorithms. Mathematical analyses and simulations are presented in this paper, and verify the effectiveness of our synchronization algorithm.