Department of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
Key Lab for IOT and Information Fusion Technology of Zhejiang, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou 310018, China.
Sensors (Basel). 2019 Mar 19;19(6):1367. doi: 10.3390/s19061367.
Time synchronization is an important middleware function that supports the Quality of Service (QoS) of systems in wireless sensor array networks. Instead of providing high synchronization accuracy for all application scenarios, we argue that synchronization protocols should be application specific. In this paper, we exploit the synchronization requirements of target-tracking systems in wireless sensor array networks and propose an energy-efficient Sensor Array Synchronization Protocol (SASP), which provides the required synchronization accuracy to guarantee the QoS. Specifically, when no target appears, to guarantee system lifetime, coarse synchronization is achieved with little overhead by piggybacking time information onto periodical network maintenance packets. Once targets appear, SASP achieves high inter-array and relatively higher intra-array synchronization accuracy rather than the traditional network-wide high accuracy on average. In this way, it guarantees reliable communication and accurate data fusion, while reducing energy consumption. Theoretical analysis and extensive evaluations show the effectiveness of the proposed protocol.
时间同步是支持无线传感器阵列网络中系统服务质量 (QoS) 的重要中间件功能。我们认为，同步协议不应该为所有应用场景提供高精度的同步，而是应该针对特定的应用。在本文中，我们利用无线传感器阵列网络中目标跟踪系统的同步需求，提出了一种节能的传感器阵列同步协议 (SASP)，它提供了所需的同步精度，以保证 QoS。具体来说，当没有目标出现时，为了保证系统的生命周期，通过将时间信息附加到周期性的网络维护数据包中，可以以较小的开销实现粗略同步。一旦出现目标，SASP 就可以实现较高的阵列间和相对较高的阵列内同步精度，而不是传统的全网平均高精度。这样，它可以保证可靠的通信和准确的数据融合，同时降低能耗。理论分析和广泛的评估表明了所提出协议的有效性。
