Clock Self-Synchronization Protocol based on Distributed Diffusion for Wireless Sensor Networks

Aimed at the low precision and scalability of synchronization protocol in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), this paper proposes a clock self-synchronization protocol based on distributed diffusion (DDCSS). According to the energy, distribution and the average transmission delay of nodes, DDCSS chooses a set of master-node and diffusion-nodes which are used to perform local diffusion in each round. And then the average clock of master-node field is spread to the surrounding nodes. After that the surrounding nodes update the local clock by receiving the average clock. Eventually through several rounds of election master-nodes and diffusion-nodes, networks implement mutual diffusion and the node clock is approximate synchronization the average clock of network nodes. The simulation results demonstrate that, compared with the traditional synchronization methods, DDCSS can synchronize the network quickly with good precision convergence speed and scalability.