Evaluation of a radio signal as a time reference beacon for wireless sensor networks
Meriel Huggard, Alessandro Vaccaro, Ciarán McGoldrick · 2016 International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC) · 2016
Consistent, unified time knowledge and associated clock synchronisation are key elements of many future Wireless Sensor Network deployment scenarios. Reliable synchronisation is necessary for applications that involve distributed tasks, such as medium access control involving sleep cycles for smart power management, precise sensor sampling, WSN control and actuation, data sequencing and aggregation. For instance, in order to provide a snapshot in time of a monitored structure for digital control and structural health monitoring purposes, data must be accurately timestamped and support transmission and routing time bounds. MSF60 Radio Time Signal receivers are evaluated as a means of synchronising the clock at each node of a Wireless Sensor Network. The signal reception delay is characterised and bounded. Its impact on system synchronisation is empirically evaluated using a mixed hardware and software implementation using an Arduino. Analysis of a possible application of the system to monitor low frequency events in sparse networks is then provided.