Performance analysis of WM-Bus-based synchronization protocols in Sensor Networks

Smart metering wireless sensor networks need to refer to a common time scale for several reasons. As examples: (i) in power quality, some measures at different nodes of the network are senseless if not synchronized; (ii) in security, in case of lack of synch, a replay attack could result successful; (iii) in billing, different times of the day can be charged differently. Generally, the synchronization can be reached in many ways, in this paper the authors make a comparison between different synchronization techniques considering a communication protocol specifically designed for measures with wireless sensors: the Wireless Metering bus.