A Novel Energy-Balanced Time Synchronization Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks for Bridge Structure Health Monitoring

Wireless sensor network (WSN) application for bridge structure health monitoring (SHM), requires a scalable time synchronization service enabling data consistency and coordination. This paper describes the Energy-Balanced time Synchronization protocol (EBS), especially tailored for bridge structure health monitoring application. Through analyzing the characteristics of the bridge SHM, we present the especial requirements for designing the time synchronization protocol in WSN for SHM. Following the requirements, the proposed time synchronization protocol utilizes dynamically selecting the maximum reserve energy sensor node as broadcasting node to achieve energy balance among nodes in network. In addition, the EBS protocol fully exploits the wireless broadcast channel property in bridge SHM, so the broadcast communication flow is small. The high precision performance is reached by utilizing MAC-layer time-stamp as in the existing FTSP protocol. Finally, The EBS protocol performance is evaluated and compared to FTSP protocol.