Light-Sync: A low overhead synchronization algorithm for underwater acoustic networks

Clock synchronization is a fundamental requirement in a network of sensor nodes. Underwater sensor networks are a special kind of sensor networks characterized by a strong energy constraint; on the other hand, the low communication results in a less stringent constraint on the synchronization accuracy. In this paper, we propose Light-Sync, a new synchronization protocol for underwater sensor networks in which the best synchronization accuracy is sacrificed to the benefit of a lower communication overhead and finally to a lower consumed energy. We analyze the protocol performance in terms of skew and offset estimation accuracy and compare the estimation variance to the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB). We study the energy consumption and synchronization error through an extensive simulation study in an underwater acoustic scenario. Simulation results show that Light-Sync is a suitable choice for synchronizing underwater sensors with an extremely low power consumption.