Robust time synchronization in wireless sensor networks using real time clock

Abstract

Time synchronization is an essential service in many sensor network applications. Harsh environment which causes nodes to fail, go offline, or reboot can challenge many time synchronization protocols. In this work, we first characterize this challenge and use a real time clock in one of the nodes in the network to improve robustness of time synchronization. Our experiments show that our approach improves the robustness of state-of-the-art offline time synchronization protocols.