Fast Convergence Time Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Average Consensus

Average consensus theory is intensely popular for building time synchronization in wireless sensor network (WSN). However, the average consensus-based time synchronization algorithm is based on the iteration that poses challenges for efficiency, as they entail high communication cost and long convergence time in large-scale WSN. Based on the suggestion that the greater the algebraic connectivity the faster the convergence, a novel multihop average consensus time synchronization (MACTS) is developed with innovative implementation in this article. By employing multihop communication model, it shows that virtual communication links among multihop nodes are generated and algebraic connectivity of the network increases. Meanwhile, a multihop controller is developed to balance the convergence time, accuracy, and communication complexity. Moreover, the accurate relative clock offset estimation is yielded by delay compensation. Implementing the MACTS based on the popular one-way broadcast model and taking multihop over short distances, we achieve hundreds of times the MACTS convergence rate compared to average TimeSync (ATS).