Clock Synchronization Simulation for Wireless Sensor Networks

A lot of research is done in the field of wireless sensor networks, particularly in the field of ad-hoc networks. Large-scale real-time wireless networks for factory automation are hardly covered by existing research. Such networks usually have thousands of nodes, which makes simulation a necessity for system validation. Discrete Event Simulators (DES) are efficient tools to do so, but their event schedulers make it impossible to simulate distributed clocks, which is mandatory for validation of TDMA based protocols. This paper proposes an approach to enhance DES systems with models of local clocks. Further, it provides a realistic simulation of distributed clocks without losing the performance advantages of abstract modeling.