An Improved TPSN Algorithm for Time Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Network

Time synchronization is important for many applications running in wireless sensor network. A classical algorithm, Timing-Sync Protocol for Sensor Networks (TPSN), has been widely adopted, which can achieve of the goal of high accuracy and energy-efficiency. However, the accuracy of TPSN algorithm will decrease in practical environments since communication conflicts occur in an ad-hoc wireless environment. We propose an improved algorithm that can resolve conflicts in the process of synchronization. Both theoretical analysis and simulations show that our method achieves better accuracy and uses less energy consumption when node density of network increases.