On the Trade-off between Power Consumption and Time Synchronization Quality for Moving Targets under Large-Scale Fading Effects in Wireless Sensor Networks

Pablo Briff, Leonardo Rey Vega, Ariel Lutenberg, Fabian Vargas

Embedded Systems Laboratory, Faculty of Engineering, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Signal Processing and Communications Laboratory, Faculty of Engineering, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Signals and Systems for Computing Group, Faculty of Engineering, Catholic University, PUCRS, Brazil.

DOI: 10.4236/cn.2013.53B2091                

Abstract

In this work we find a lower bound on the energy required for synchronizing moving sensor nodes in a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) affected by large-scale fading, based on clock estimation techniques. The energy required for synchronizing a WSN within a desired estimation error level is specified by both the transmit power and the required number of messages. In this paper we extend our previous work introducing nodes’ movement and the average message delay in the total energy, including a comprehensive analysis on how the distance between nodes impacts on the energy and synchronization quality trade-off under large-scale fading effects.

Keywords

Wireless Sensor Networks; Clock Offset Estimation; Time Synchronization; Wireless Channel Fading; Moving Targets

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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