A lightweight method for time synchronization in wireless sensor networks

A distributed time synchronization protocol whose objective is to provide a common notion of time between the sensor nodes is mandatory for many applications in wireless sensor networks. This paper presents Simple Time Synchronization (STS) protocol whose main objective is to achieve networkwide synchronization with microsecond precision using a simple and lightweight method. STS achieves synchronization by fast flooding synchronization messages which are periodically broadcasted by a reference node and uses a simple averaging strategy for drift compensation. STS is implemented on Iris platform using TinyOS and evaluated on a testbed setup including 16 sensor nodes. Experimental results show that the prototype implementation of STS outperforms Flooding Time Synchronization Protocol which is the de facto protocol for time synchronization in wireless sensor networks.