A Novel Synchronization Scheme Based on a Dynamic Superframe for an Industrial Internet of Things in Underground Mining

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has a wide range of applications, such as intelligent manufacturing, production process optimization, production equipment monitoring, etc. Due to the complex circumstance in underground mining, the performance of WSNs faces enormous challenges, such as data transmission delay, packet loss rate, and so on. The MAC (Media Access Control) protocol based on TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) is an effective solution, but it needs to ensure the clock synchronization between the transmission nodes. As the key technology of IIoT, synchronization needs to consider the factors of tunnel structure, energy consumption, etc. Traditional synchronization methods, such as TPSN (Timing-sync Protocol for Sensor Networks), RBS (Reference Broadcast Synchronization), mainly focus on improving synchronization accuracy, ignoring the impact of the actual environment, cannot be directly applied to the IIoT in underground mining. In underground mining, there are two kinds of nodes: base-station node and sensor node, which have different topologies, so they constitute a hybrid topology. In this paper, according to hybrid topology of unground mining, a clock synchronization scheme based on a dynamic superframe is designed. In this scheme, the base-station and sensor have different synchronization methods, improving the TPSN and RBS algorithm, respectively, and adjusts the period of the superframe dynamically by estimating the clock offset. The synchronization scheme presented in this paper can reduce the network communication overhead and energy consumption, ensuring the synchronization accuracy. Based on theCC2530 (Asystem-on-chip solution for IEEE 802.15.4, Zigbee and RF4CE applications), the experiments are compared and analyzed, including synchronization accuracy, energy consumption, and robustness tests. Experimental results show that the synchronization accuracy of the proposed method is at least 11% higher than that of the existing methods, and the energy consumption can be reduced by approximately 13%. At the same time, the proposed method has better robustness.

[1]  E. Nett,et al.  Continuous clock synchronization in wireless real-time applications , 2000, Proceedings 19th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems SRDS-2000.

[2]  Kay Römer.  Time synchronization in ad hoc networks , 2001, MobiHoc '01.

[3]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation Fine-grained Network Time Synchronization Using Reference Broadcasts , 2022 .

[4]  Jan M. Rabaey,et al.  Lightweight time synchronization for sensor networks , 2003, WSNA '03.

[5]  Saurabh Ganeriwal,et al.  Timing-sync protocol for sensor networks , 2003, SenSys '03.

[6]  Amit Kumar Saha,et al.  Adaptive clock synchronization in sensor networks , 2004, Third International Symposium on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, 2004. IPSN 2004.

[7]  Gyula Simon,et al.  The flooding time synchronization protocol , 2004, SenSys '04.

[8]  Ian F. Akyildiz,et al.  Time-diffusion synchronization protocol for wireless sensor networks , 2005, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

[9]  Qun Li,et al.  Global Clock Synchronization in Sensor Networks , 2006, IEEE Trans. Computers.

[10]  Zhou Xianwei.  Research on Time Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Network , 2006 .

[11]  Erchin Serpedin,et al.  Pairwise Broadcast Clock Synchronization for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks.

[12]  Y. Bar-Ness,et al.  Distributed synchronization in wireless networks , 2008, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

[13]  Sean Y. Sol,et al.  Relationships Between Anthropogenic Chemical Contaminant Exposure and Associated Changes in Reproductive Parameters in Male English Sole (Parophrys vetulus) Collected from Hylebos Waterway, Puget Sound, Washington , 2008, Archives of environmental contamination and toxicology.

[14]  Mani B. Srivastava,et al.  Temperature Compensated Time Synchronization , 2009, IEEE Embedded Systems Letters.

[15]  Ioannis Chatzigiannakis,et al.  WISEBED: An Open Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Network Testbed , 2009, SENSAPPEAL.

[16]  Yik-Chung Wu,et al.  Joint Time Synchronization and Localization of an Unknown Node in Wireless Sensor Networks , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

[17]  Alexander Gluhak,et al.  A survey on facilities for experimental internet of things research , 2011, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[18]  Jianping Pan,et al.  Environment-aware clock skew estimation and synchronization for wireless sensor networks , 2012, 2012 Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM.

[19]  R. Exel,et al.  Clock synchronization in IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs using physical layer timestamps , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Symposium on Precision Clock Synchronization for Measurement, Control and Communication Proceedings.

[20]  Ioannis Chatzigiannakis,et al.  Flexible experimentation in wireless sensor networks , 2012, Commun. ACM.

[21]  José M. Palomares,et al.  Temperature-Compensated Clock Skew Adjustment , 2013, Sensors.

[22]  Rui Ma,et al.  Analysis of Typical Time Synchronization Technology in Wireless Sensor Network , 2013 .

[23]  Ding En-jie.  A time synchronization algorithm for underground linear WSN , 2013 .

[24]  Meng Jin,et al.  Voltage-Aware Time Synchronization for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2014, Int. J. Distributed Sens. Networks.

[25]  Chen Zhenpin.  Estimation of transmission delay of time synchronization information for Internet of things of coal mine underground , 2014 .

[26]  Qixin Wang,et al.  Inter-cell Channel Time-Slot Scheduling for Multichannel Multiradio Cellular Fieldbuses , 2015, 2015 IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium.

[27]  Djamel Djenouri,et al.  Synchronization Protocols and Implementation Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Review , 2016, IEEE Systems Journal.

[28]  David K. Y. Yau,et al.  Exploiting Power Grid for Accurate and Secure Clock Synchronization in Industrial IoT , 2016, 2016 IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS).

[29]  Xiaohu You,et al.  Robust Synchronization Waveform Design for Massive IoT , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[30]  Mohamed S. Shehata,et al.  Structural Health Monitoring Using Wireless Sensor Networks: A Comprehensive Survey , 2017, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[31]  Jintao Wang,et al.  Cluster-Based Maximum Consensus Time Synchronization for Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks , 2017, Sensors.

[32]  Chunqiang Liu,et al.  Research on Time Synchronization Technology of Wireless Sensor Network , 2017, 2017 International Conference on Cyber-Enabled Distributed Computing and Knowledge Discovery (CyberC).

[33]  Subhash Kumar,et al.  Wireless Sensor Network for Underground Mining Services Applications , 2017 .

[34]  Heng Wang,et al.  Estimation of Clock Skew for Time Synchronization Based on Two-Way Message Exchange Mechanism in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

[35]  Minyue Fu,et al.  A fast clock synchronization algorithm for wireless sensor networks , 2018, Autom..

[36]  Davide Brunelli,et al.  Lightweight Synchronization Algorithm with Self-Calibration for Industrial LORA Sensor Networks , 2018, 2018 Workshop on Metrology for Industry 4.0 and IoT.

[37]  Poonam Saini,et al.  Performance Analysis of Time Synchronization Protocols on Different Commercial Mote Platforms , 2018 .

[38]  Xiao Liu,et al.  Learning-based synchronous approach from forwarding nodes to reduce the delay for Industrial Internet of Things , 2018, EURASIP J. Wirel. Commun. Netw..

[39]  Arun Kumar Sangaiah,et al.  A Robust Time Synchronization Scheme for Industrial Internet of Things , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

[40]  Luca Benini,et al.  Slotted ALOHA Overlay on LoRaWAN - A Distributed Synchronization Approach , 2018, 2018 IEEE 16th International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC).

[41]  José Carlos Campelo,et al.  GTSO: Global Trace Synchronization and Ordering Mechanism for Wireless Sensor Network Monitoring Platforms , 2018, Sensors.

[42]  K. R. Anupama,et al.  Swarm-Sync: A distributed global time synchronization framework for swarm robotic systems , 2018, Pervasive Mob. Comput..

[43]  Charles Wang,et al.  Time synchronization in vehicular ad-hoc networks: A survey ontheory and practice , 2018, Veh. Commun..

[44]  Xi Jin,et al.  Node-Identification-Based Secure Time Synchronization in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks , 2018, Sensors.

[45]  Divya Upadhyay,et al.  Time synchronization problem of wireless sensor network using maximum probability theory , 2018, Int. J. Syst. Assur. Eng. Manag..