Exploiting FM radio data system for adaptive clock calibration in sensor networks

Clock synchronization is critical for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) due to the need of inter-node coordination and collaborative information processing. Although many message passing protocols can achieve satisfactory clock synchronization accuracy, they incur prohibitively high overhead when the network scales to more than tens of nodes. An alternative approach is to take advantage of the global time reference induced by existing infrastructures including GPS, timekeeping radio stations, or power grid. However, high power consumption and geographic constraints present them from being widely adopted in WSNs. In this paper, we propose ROCS, a new clock synchronization approach exploiting the Radio Data System (RDS) of FM radios. First, we design a new hardware FM receiver that can extract a periodic pulse from FM broadcasts, referred to as RDS clock. We then conduct a large-scale measurement study of RDS clock in our lab for a period of six days and on a vehicle driving through a met...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: MOBISYS
• Authors: Liqun Li, Guoliang Xing, Limin Sun, Wei Huangfu, Ruogu Zhou, Hongsong Zhu
• Keywords: Clock Synchronization, Computer Communication Networks, Computer Networks, MOBISYS 2011, Wireless Sensor Networks