Delay Compensated One-Way Time Synchronization in Distributed Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks require accurate time synchronization to perform collaborative tasks on multiple distributed sensor nodes. However, the performance is greatly affected by the unpredictability of message delays in the synchronization process, which causes cumulative error and challenges to clock parameter estimations. We propose a delay compensated consensus Kalman-based time synchronization (DCCKTS) protocol to estimate the fluctuated delay effectively. We propose an algorithm to update all parameters in a one-way message exchange while maintaining time synchronization accuracy and energy consumption. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with traditional algorithms. Simulation results demonstrate that the algorithm performs better than conventional algorithms under an unknown Gaussian delay model.