Power Consumption Analysis of Prominent Time Synchronization Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Various Time Synchronization protocols for a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) have been developed since time synchronization is important in many timecritical WSN applications. Aside from synchronization accuracy, energy constraint should also be considered seriously for time synchronization protocols in WSNs, which typically have limited power environments. This paper performs analysis of prominent WSN time synchronization protocols in terms of power consumption and test by simulation. In the analysis and simulation tests, each protocol shows different performance in terms of power consumption. This result is helpful in choosing or developing an appropriate time synchronization protocol that meets the requirements of synchronization accuracy and power consumption (or network lifetime) for a specific WSN application. Keywords—Wireless Sensor Networks, Time Synchronization, Energy Efficiency, Power Consumption, Performance, Analysis