Phoenix: An Epidemic Approach to Time Reconstruction

Abstract. Harsh deployment environments and uncertain run-time conditions create numerous challenges for postmortem time reconstruction methods. For example, motes often reboot and thus lose their clock state, considering that the majority of mote platforms lack a real-time clock. While existing time reconstruction methods for long-term data gathering networks rely on a persistent basestation for assigning global timestamps to measurements, the basestation may be unavailable due to hardware and software faults. We present Phoenix, a novel offline algorithm for reconstructing global timestamps that is robust to frequent mote reboots and does not require a persistent global time source. This independence sets Phoenix apart from the majority of time reconstruction algorithms which assume that such a source is always available. Motes in Phoenix exchange their time-related state with their neighbors, establishing a chain of transitive temporal relationships to one or more motes with referen...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: EWSN
• Authors: Jayant Gupchup, Douglas Carlson, Razvan Musaloiu-Elefteri, Alexander S. Szalay, Andreas Terzis
• Keywords: EWSN 2010, Global Time Source, Persistent Global Time, Time Reconstruction Methods, Wireless Network