Temperature-resilient time synchronization for the internet of things Show others and affiliations
2018 (English) In: IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, ISSN 1551-3203, E-ISSN 1941-0050, Vol. 14, no 5, p. 2241-2250Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Networks deployed in real-world conditions have to cope with dynamic, unpredictable environmental temperature changes. These changes affect the clock rate on network nodes, and can cause faster clock de-synchronization compared to situations where devices are operating under stable temperature conditions. Wireless network protocols, such as time-slotted channel hopping (TSCH) from the IEEE 802.15.4-2015 standard, are affected by this problem, since they require tight clock synchronization among all nodes for the network to remain operational. This paper proposes a method for autonomously compensating temperature-dependent clock rate changes. After a calibration stage, nodes continuously perform temperature measurements to compensate for clock drifts at runtime. The method is implemented on low-power Internet of Things (IoT) nodes and evaluated through experiments in a temperature chamber, indoor and outdoor environments, as well as with numerical simulations. The results show that applying the method reduces the maximum synchronization error more than ten times. In this way, the method allows reduction in the total energy spent for time synchronization, which is practically relevant concern for low data rate, low energy budget TSCH networks, especially those exposed to environments with changing temperature.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages 2018. Vol. 14, no 5, p. 2241-2250
Keywords [en]
Communication networks, thermal factors, Budget control, Clocks, Internet of things, Network protocols, Numerical methods, Standards, Synchronization, Temperature measurement, Changing temperature, Clock Synchronization, Environmental temperature changes, Outdoor environment, Synchronization error, Temperature conditions, Temperature dependent, Time synchronization, Low power electronics
National Category
Natural Sciences
Identifiers URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-33895 DOI: 10.1109/TII.2017.2778746 Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85037609307 OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-33895 DiVA, id: diva2:1211068
Note Funding details: EP/K031910/1, EPSRC, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; Funding details: TII-17-1666; Funding details: University of Bristol; Funding details: 761586; Funding details: 5G-CORAL; This work was supported in part by the SPHERE IRC funded by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under Grant EP/K031910/1, in part by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant 761586 (5G-CORAL), in part by the distributed environment Ecare@Home funded by the Swedish Knowledge Foundation, and in part by a Grant from CPER Nord-Pas-deCalais/FEDER DATA. Paper no. TII-17-1666.
2018-05-302018-05-302019-01-16 Bibliographically approved