Time distribution in IPv6 Wireless Sensor Networks

In the last years, Wireless Sensor Networks experienced a great success in the research community and also the interest of the industrial world seems increasing, as demonstrated by the definition of several standards (e.g. WirelessHART and ISA100.11a). Up to now, network robustness and optimization of the power consumption are the key point of a sensors network. However, the recent technology improvements offer a plenty of processing power and, in this scenario, some background aspects (e.g. advanced networking and time synchronization) cannot be ignored. This paper focuses its attention on synchronization on Wireless Sensor Network based on IPv6 protocol. The integration of IEEE 1588 protocol into this scenario has been analyzed. The synchronization stack has been implemented over a performing platform, which achieves a timestamping accuracy in the order of ±500 ns. However, the synchronization capabilities of the overall system is in the order of 1 ms.