Reference-based efficient time synchronization protocol in wireless sensor networks

Since sensor nodes operate on the same timeline, for successful cooperation, time synchronization is an important requirement in a wireless sensor network. Message packets with time information are used for this time synchronization. However, since wireless sensor nodes have limited battery capacities, the excessive use of message packets shortens their lifetimes. In this paper, a reference interpolation protocol is proposed to reduce the number of messages for time synchronization. The proposed method performs time interpolation between the reference packet times and the global time of a base station. It completes time synchronization with only two message packets.