A Novel Reliable Adaptive Beacon Time Synchronization Algorithm for Large-Scale Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

The time synchronization in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) has gained significant attention in recent times. In this paper, we focus on the time synchronization in large-scale VANETs and propose an adaptive beacon time synchronization (ABTS) algorithm to enhance timing message synchronization. ABTS algorithm selects the best time synchronization pairs to decrease the number of timing messages transmitted. To guarantee the reliability of synchronization, the clock offset of the connected vehicles periodically readjust to provide a better degree of synchronization accuracy with minimum energy consumption. Based on two-way timing message synchronization, we derive maximum likelihood (ML) estimation and its equivalent Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for clock offset design in the generalized sender-to-receiver system by assuming a Gaussian noise model. We propose node pair selection algorithms to improve pairwise beacon message timing synchronization. The simulation results validate that our proposed ABTS algorithm performs better than other protocols in terms of synchronization accuracy, the rate of convergence and energy efficiency.