Syncob: Collaborative Time Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper analyses the problem of time-synchronization of distributed sensor nodes. We present a Syncob, a method for synchronizing an arbitrary number of nodes in a distributed setting without the requirements of an infrastructure, master node or time and resource consuming protocol overhead. Syncob is therefore also very good suited for highly mobile settings with ad-hoc communication. Syncob is implemented as a physical layer protocol and provides a time synchronization deviation of max. 4μs between any participating node. Our implementation on low-cost pPart sensor nodes shows that Syncob requires very low overhead and very low complexity for hardware and software.