Integrated Time Synchronization for Wireless Sensor Networks

Time synchronization is an essential problem for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). There have been many research works about time synchronization in WSNs in the literature. Most of them only correct the clock offset, i.e., adjust two clocks to the same time. However, as the clock drift is not compensated, two clocks run at different rates, and will be different again after a while. In this paper, an integrated time synchronization scheme is proposed. In this scheme, we not only correct the clock offset but also compensate the clock drift to make two clocks run at the same rate. Mathematical analyses and simulations are presented in this paper, and verify the effectiveness of our synchronization scheme.