Effect of Channel Errors on Time Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, time synchronization is highly desired because data collected from agglomerated sensors become truly meaningful when they are stamped with the accurate time. Most of current studies on time synchronization don't consider the effects of channel errors on time synchronization. In this paper, we evaluate effects of channel error on time synchronization via simulations in different configurations. We study the impact degree of channel error on synchronization time and clock drift. Our results show that channel error is an important factor in time synchronization in wireless sensor networks. Our results also show time offset delta exponentially increases as the channel error rate increases.