The Consensus Time Synchronization (CTS) overcomes the shortcoming of centralized time synchronization in terms of scalability and robustness to node failure. However, CTS leads to slow convergence rate, high communication traffic and the inability to provide synchronization to an external time source. This paper proposes a novel distributed time synchronization protocol for WSNs, the Consensus-based Multi-hop Time Synchronization (CMTS) protocol. CMTS combines the benefits of consensus-based scheme, multi-level topology, synchronization by overhearing, master node synchronization, and MAC-layer timestamping. Simulations are performed to validate the effectiveness of CMTS. The results show that CMTS achieves high accuracy and improves the convergence time compared to competing schemes in the literature.
['Amin Saiah', 'Chafika Benzaid', 'Nadjib Badache']
CMTS: Consensus-based Multi-hop Time Synchronization protocol in wireless sensor networks