A Robust and Low-Complexity Estimation Scheme for Clock Skew Without Timestamp Exchange in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have a broad range of applications, and time synchronization is essential to ensure their correct operation. In this paper, a clock skew estimation scheme is presented for timestamp-free synchronization, which greatly simplifies computation while economizing energy consumption. Considering that no single delay model can fit all cases in WSNs, a robust estimator with low complexity based on this scheme is developed that can estimate clock skew accurately without prior statistical characteristics of delays. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.