Synchronization impact on the performance of Data-Timed Sending (DTS) based wireless sensor networks

Energy efficiency of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is highly affected by duration of periods when sensors transmit data. In order to reduce the amount of transmitted bits from each sensor's radio, the basic Data Timed Sending (DTS) method was recently proposed by the authors. Basic DTS addresses the packet size reduction, achieved by eliminating the Data Payload from the data packets or by using the acknowledgment packets. The information about measured values is transferred by choosing appropriate moment (time slot and time window) in the time interval for performing the packet transmission. The position of every time slot corresponds to a particular node and the position of every time window corresponds to a certain value of measured phenomenon. In one time interval each node sends data from one measurement. Since the synchronization is crucial for feasibility of this method, this paper examines the impact of synchronization error. The simulation results show that for the realistic levels of noise, the Linear Regression (LR) synchronization technique offers sufficient accuracy.