Accumulative-based delay statistics for data synchronization algorithm wireless sensor network

As a premise of correct data fusion in the sensor network, data synchronization means that all the data reported by the sensors must be based on a same time benchmark, the data collected time and its order must be consistent with the real case. Because of the drift of the oscillator and the different initial start-up time, all the local clocks in the network are not synchronized, the data based on the local clock timestamp cannot by synchronized. A data synchronization algorithm was proposed based on accumulated delay static. A delay field was added in the packet header to record the total undergoing delay since the data were collected by the source node. The internal node would update the field based on the delay. When the sink received the packet, it could induce the collected time of the data with the total delay field and its clock. And all the data could be synchronized at the sink. It is proved that this algorithm can achieve ms level precision and is suited for the medial and low precision level application. Its communication overhead is almost zero compared with the general data synchronization algorithms.