An Insomnia Therapy for Clock Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Intermittent connection of wireless links, caused by low duty cycle radio operation, harsh working environment, movement of sensor nodes, etc., makes clock synchronization a challenging task. Prior synchronization approaches in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) typically require that nodes exchange time messages frequently with the reference clock, which is difficult in networks with low or intermittent connectivity. This poster presents RobSync, a robust design for clock synchronization in intermittent-connected wireless networks. Having recognized that clock skew is highly correlated to the voltage supply, we use the local voltage information as a reference for clock self-calibration, which helps reduce the frequency of time-stamp exchanges. To prevent a misuse of the voltage information, leading to error accumulation, a re-synchronization interval adjustment design is developed to make a trade-off between accuracy and energy consumption. We present the theory behind RobSync, and provide preliminary results by experiments to compare our approach and the recent approach.