Synchronization Uncertainty Contributions in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper deals with a detailed analysis of the uncertainty sources affecting the inter-node time synchronization in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This analysis relies on several experimental results performed on commercial nodes and it is used to model the uncertainty contributions associated to both local time measurements and time transfers between WSN nodes. The obtained models represent the first step to implement a simulation framework aimed at comparing the performance of different synchronization protocols on a common reference platform.