A Comparative study of Time Synchronization Protocols in Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless sensors network is a type of the ad-hoc network. It is comprised of many sensors which are interlinked with each other for performing the same function collectively such as monitoring the weather conditions, temperature, different kind of vibrations and sound etc. Any distributed system requires time synchronization. In particular, time Synchronization is extremely important for Wireless sensor network applications e.g. for data fusion, TDMA schedules, synchronizes sleep periods, etc. In this paper, we study different time synchronization protocols available for sensor networks, like Reference Broadcast Synchronization (RBS), Flooding Time Synchronization Protocol (FTSP) and Time Synchronization Protocol for Sensor networks (TPSN). Network Time Protocol (NTP) which is very famous in the computer network is also considered. The simulations of these different protocols are performed on the sensor network with the help of a simulator. The effects of these protocols on different parameters are studied and results obtained are compared.