Energy Minimization Algorithm for Estimation of Clock Skew and Reception Window Selection in Wireless Networks

The synchronization of time between devices is one of the more important and challenging problems in wireless networks. We discuss the problem of maximization of the probability of receiving a message from a device using a limited listening time window to minimize energy utilization. We propose a solution to two important problems in wireless networks of battery-powered devices: a method of establishing a connection with a device that has been disconnected from the system for a long time and developed unknown skew and also two approaches to follow-up clock synchronization using the confidence interval method. We start with the analysis of measurements of clock skew. The algorithms are evaluated using extensive simulations and we discuss the selection of parameters balancing between minimizing the energy utilization and maximizing the probability of reception of the message. We show that the selection of a time window of growing size requires less energy to receive a packet than using the same size of time window repeated multiple times. The shifting of reception windows can further decrease the energy cost if lower packet reception probability is acceptable. We also propose and evaluate an algorithm scaling the reception window size to the interval between the packet transmission.