A Lightweight Time Synchronisation for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

An efficient time synchronisation could increase the performance of most wireless sensor network (WSN) applications significantly. The energy conservation of sensor nodes using the theory of periodic activation and sleep relies on schedule tables with accurate timestamps which are maintained by frequent time synchronisations. In this paper, a time synchronisation scheme with a new Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol, named Schedule Awareness MAC (SA-MAC), is proposed for energy conservation purposes. The research focuses on MAC and application layer protocols. In SA-MAC, every sensor node obtains its two-hop neighbour active time slots information by applying dimensionality reduction to generate concentrated schedule tables. The simulation results show the lifetime of the network is extended significantly with an acceptable time error rate.