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Time Synchronization in Large-scale Networks

Author
Hu, An-swol
Abstract
Network time synchronization is an important aspect of sensor
network operation. It is often achieved by synchronizing the clock
of each node in the network to the clock of some reference node.
However, it is well known that synchronization error accumulates
over multiple hops. This scalability problem presents a
challenge for large-scale, multi-hop sensor networks with a large
number of nodes distributed over wide areas.
In this thesis we develop the use of spatial averaging as an
approach to mitigating the effects of the scalability problem. We
first develop a cooperative synchronization technique using spatial
averaging that can achieve "perfect" synchronization in the limit
of an infinitely dense network. We show that it is possible to
maintain a perfect timing signal with equispaced zero-crossings that
occur at integer values of the reference time. Second, we study
the benefits of cooperative time synchronization using spatial
averaging in networks of finite density. We present a protocol that
uses spatial averaging to reduce error accumulation in large-scale
networks and show that synchronization performance can be
significantly improved by increasing network density.
Date Issued
2006-12-06Subject
time synchronization; sensor networks; spatial averaging; wireless networks
Type
dissertation or thesis