Comparative analysis of RTSP, FTSP, and TPSN implementations for time synchronization in wireless sensor networks for structural health monitoring (TimeSyncWSN)

• Main Authors: Dela Cerna, Kysonn Roi See, Lee, Axl Cedric Chua, Maceda, Dustin Wenzel Tanunliong, Sih, Rainer Nielsen Victoria
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Time; Synchronization; Wireless sensor networks; Structural health monitoring; Computer Sciences; Systems Engineering
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdb_comtech/7; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=etdb_comtech
• Institution: De La Salle University

Civil infrastructure in the Philippines is susceptible to damage caused by a multitude of natural and man-made phenomena such as typhoons, earthquakes, pollution, fires, and the like. As such, it is important to employ Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques such as implementing Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) to measure and assess structural health with the use of vibration data. One major problem that arises when designing and implementing WSNs is time synchronization across nodes. Time synchronization error between nodes in a WSN can result in inaccurate measurements which would render the network practically useless. Many time synchronization algorithm options for WSNs have not been fully characterized and compared in real-world applications. Thus, Multiple time synchronization algorithms (TPSN, FTSP, and RTSP) were tested in order to characterize each algorithm's balance of accuracy and power consumption. It was found that the distance between nodes had little impact on the performance of all algorithms. For FTSP and RTSP, the error stayed within 1.5 ms for all tested ranges. For TPSN, the error stayed within 0.7 ms for all tested ranges. In terms of hop distance, the error for both FTSP and TPSN grew around 1 ms per hop. On the other hand, the error with RTSP did not seem to grow with the number of hops. Additionally, FTSP consumed the least amount of current using 46 mA, while TPSN and RTSP consumed around 50 mA and 51 mA respectively.