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Reverse Flooding: exploiting radio interference for efficient propagation delay compensation in WSN clock synchronization

Terraneo, Federico ; Leva, Alberto ; Seva, Silvano ; Maggio, Martina LU and Papadopoulos, Alessandro Vittorio LU (2016) 36th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS) p.175-184
Abstract
Clock synchronization is a necessary component in modern distributed systems, especially WSN. Despite the great effort and the numerous improvements, the existing synchronization schemes do not yet address the cancellation of propagation delays. Up to a few years ago, this was not perceived as a problem, because the time-stamping precision was a more limiting factor for the accuracy achievable with a synchronization scheme. However, the recent introduction of efficient flooding schemes based on constructive interference has greatly improved the achievable accuracy, to the point where propagation delays can effectively become the main source of error.



In this paper, we propose a method to estimate and compensate for the... (More)
Clock synchronization is a necessary component in modern distributed systems, especially WSN. Despite the great effort and the numerous improvements, the existing synchronization schemes do not yet address the cancellation of propagation delays. Up to a few years ago, this was not perceived as a problem, because the time-stamping precision was a more limiting factor for the accuracy achievable with a synchronization scheme. However, the recent introduction of efficient flooding schemes based on constructive interference has greatly improved the achievable accuracy, to the point where propagation delays can effectively become the main source of error.



In this paper, we propose a method to estimate and compensate for the network propagation delays. Our proposal does not require to maintain a spanning tree of the network, and exploits constructive interference even to transmit packets whose content are slightly different. To show the validity of the approach, we implemented the propagation delay estimator on top of the FLOPSYNC-2 synchronization scheme.



Experimental results prove the feasibility of measuring propagation delays using off-the-shelf microcontrollers and radio transceivers, and show how the proposed solution allows to achieve sub-microsecond clock synchronization even for networks where propagation delays are significant. (Less)
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author
; ; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
host publication
Proceedings - Real-Time Systems Symposium
pages
175 - 184
conference name
36th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS)
conference location
San Antonio, TX, United States
conference dates
2015-12-01
external identifiers
  • wos:000380424600017
  • scopus:84964614040
DOI
10.1109/RTSS.2015.24
project
LCCC
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
313246c3-6c30-4e46-9330-3e0fcd4ec8ac (old id 7852911)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 12:56:53
date last changed
2022-05-09 18:42:30
@inproceedings{313246c3-6c30-4e46-9330-3e0fcd4ec8ac,
  abstract     = {{Clock synchronization is a necessary component in modern distributed systems, especially WSN. Despite the great effort and the numerous improvements, the existing synchronization schemes do not yet address the cancellation of propagation delays. Up to a few years ago, this was not perceived as a problem, because the time-stamping precision was a more limiting factor for the accuracy achievable with a synchronization scheme. However, the recent introduction of efficient flooding schemes based on constructive interference has greatly improved the achievable accuracy, to the point where propagation delays can effectively become the main source of error.<br/><br>
<br/><br>
In this paper, we propose a method to estimate and compensate for the network propagation delays. Our proposal does not require to maintain a spanning tree of the network, and exploits constructive interference even to transmit packets whose content are slightly different. To show the validity of the approach, we implemented the propagation delay estimator on top of the FLOPSYNC-2 synchronization scheme.<br/><br>
<br/><br>
Experimental results prove the feasibility of measuring propagation delays using off-the-shelf microcontrollers and radio transceivers, and show how the proposed solution allows to achieve sub-microsecond clock synchronization even for networks where propagation delays are significant.}},
  author       = {{Terraneo, Federico and Leva, Alberto and Seva, Silvano and Maggio, Martina and Papadopoulos, Alessandro Vittorio}},
  booktitle    = {{Proceedings - Real-Time Systems Symposium}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{175--184}},
  title        = {{Reverse Flooding: exploiting radio interference for efficient propagation delay compensation in WSN clock synchronization}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/6025280/8515095.pdf}},
  doi          = {{10.1109/RTSS.2015.24}},
  year         = {{2016}},
}