A Greedy Distributed Time Synchronization Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, a distributed network-wise synchronization protocol is presented. The protocol employs Pairwise Broadcast Synchronization (PBS) in which sensors can be synchronized by merely overhearing the exchange of synchronization packets. We investigate how to minimize the number of PBS required to synchronize all nodes in a network. We show that the problem of finding the minimum number of PBS required is NP-complete. A distributed greedy algorithm is proposed. The protocol is tested by extensive simulations. Although the algorithm behind is heuristic-based, the performance is closed to the centralized algorithm. The message overhead is compared with that of Timing-Sync Protocol for Sensor Networks (TPSN).