Asynchronous consensus-based time synchronisation in wireless sensor networks using unreliable communication links

Time synchronisation is required for a variety of distributed control applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this study, a consensus-based time synchronisation protocol is presented. The proposed protocol considers asynchronous framework where the sensor nodes can have different time-periods, starting times and input update times. The communication links are assumed to be unreliable. The clocks in a WSN are modelled by a time-varying system with time-delay terms. The objective is to design local control inputs to achieve time synchronisation by processing the information received from available neighbour nodes. By employing tools from non-negative matrix and graph theories, the convergence analysis is presented. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocol.