Adaptive Clock Synchronization in Sensor Networks Santashil PalChaudhuri Amit Kumar Saha David B. Johnson
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Department of Computer Science Rice University Houston, TX 77005 ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION Recent advances in technology have made low cost, low Recent advances in technology have made low-cost, low- power wireless sensors a reality. Clock synchronization is an power wireless sensors a reality. Sensor networks formed important service in any distributed system, including sen- from such sensors can be deployed in an ad hoc fashion and sor network systems. Applications of clock synchronization cooperate to sense and process a physical phenomenon. As in sensor networks include data integration in sensors, sen- each sensor has a finite battery source, an important feature sor reading fusion, TDMA medium access scheduling, and of sensor network is energy efficiency to extend the network's power mode energy saving. However, for a number of rea- lifetime. sons, standard clock synchronization protocols are unsuit- As in any distributing computer system, clock synchro- able for direct application in sensor networks. nization is an important service in sensor networks. Sensor In this paper, we introduce the concept of adaptive clock network applications can use synchronization for data inte- synchronization based on the need of the application and gration and sensor reading fusion. A sensor network may the resource constraint in the sensor networks. We describe also use synchronization for TDMA medium access schedul- a probabilistic method for clock synchronization that uses ing, power mode energy savings, and scheduling for direc- the higher precision of receiver-to-receiver synchronization, tional antenna reception.