An Energy Efficient Algorithm for Time Synchronization in Sensor Networks

The time synchronization is a well-known challenge in wireless ad hoc networks. The paper introduces an algorithm for time synchronization in wireless sensor networks. It aims to conserve the battery power of sensors to be utilized for synchronization among the nodes in the network. The proposed synchronization approach is topology driven. In the existing literature, a wide range of protocols use flooding as the basic mechanism to create a topology. However, our method is based on the clustering of nodes with minimum hop distance from the cluster head and the chaining of cluster heads in order to create an energy-efficient topology. Also, it results in substantial reduction in the total transmission overhead. Further, it restricts the energy consumption in synchronizing the nodes of the network. Moreover, the approach avoids the loss of network coverage by electing a new cluster head in the event of cluster head failure. Finally, the simulation results exhibits that the proposed approach has significant energy savings as compared to many popular algorithms.