Least Squares-Based Estimation of Relative Clock Offset and Frequency in Sensor Networks with High Latency

Accurate clock synchronization is essential in the operation of Sensor Networks. Algorithms for clock synchronization generally rely on estimators of the relative offset and frequency of two different clocks. Sensor Networks have limited power resources so it is important that these estimators not be too computationally intensive. For this reason a number of least squares-based estimators have been proposed, however they are not appropriate for sensor networks with significant propagation latency. For these applications, the Time Synchronization for High Latency (TSHL) protocol was developed. We seek to improve the accuracy of TSHL and thus propose, study, and demonstrate the effectiveness of several alternative least squares-based estimators.

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

[2]  John S. Heidemann,et al.  Time Synchronization for High Latency Acoustic Networks , 2006, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2006. 25TH IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications.

[3]  Daniel R. Jeske,et al.  On maximum-likelihood estimation of clock offset , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Communications.

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

[5]  Vern Paxson,et al.  On calibrating measurements of packet transit times , 1998, SIGMETRICS '98/PERFORMANCE '98.

[6]  Jun Li,et al.  Maximum likelihood estimators of clock offset and skew under exponential delays , 2009 .

[7]  Elizabeth A. Peck,et al.  Introduction to Linear Regression Analysis , 2001 .

[8]  Ashwin Sampath,et al.  Estimation of Clock Offset Using Bootstrap Bias-Correction Techniques , 2003, Technometrics.

[9]  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.

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

[11]  B. Suter,et al.  Power-Efficient Clock Synchronization using Two-Way Timing Message Exchanges in Wireless Sensor Networks , 2006, MILCOM 2006 - 2006 IEEE Military Communications conference.

[12]  Michael D. Lemmon,et al.  Model-based clock synchronization in networks with drifting clocks , 2000, Proceedings. 2000 Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing.

[13]  Jammalamadaka.  Introduction to Linear Regression Analysis (3rd ed.) , 2003 .