Clock synchronization is a significant basis for many operations in wireless sensor networks. The distributed consensus-based clock synchronization has gained popularity for its robustness and scalability. However, most consensus-based clock synchronization protocols either ignore communication delay, or consider bounded delay without distribution model. In this article, based on the consensus theory, the clock synchronization problem with truncated exponential delay is investigated. We use the maximum likelihood method to estimate relative drift between nodes. A recursive method is presented to cope with the maximum likelihood estimation, which largely reduces the computational complexity and the storage overhead. Then, the estimated relative drift is adopted in the two main parts of consensus clock synchronization: drift compensation and offset compensation. We give the rigorous theoretical proof of the convergence of the network-wide synchronization. Simulations further verify the theoretical analysis and show that the synchronization performance of the proposed algorithm is better than existing similar schemes under truncated exponential delays.

中文翻译：

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具有截断指数延迟的无线传感器网络中基于共识的时钟同步


时钟同步是无线传感器网络中许多操作的重要基础。基于共识的分布式时钟同步因其鲁棒性和可扩展性而受到欢迎。然而，大多数基于共识的时钟同步协议要么忽略通信延迟，要么在没有分布模型的情况下考虑有界延迟。本文基于一致性理论，研究了截断指数延迟的时钟同步问题。我们使用最大似然法来估计节点之间的相对漂移。提出了一种递归方法来处理最大似然估计，这大大降低了计算复杂度和存储开销。然后，在共识时钟同步的两个主要部分：漂移补偿和偏移补偿中采用估计的相对漂移。我们对全网同步的收敛性给出了严格的理论证明。仿真进一步验证了理论分析，表明该算法在截断指数延迟下的同步性能优于现有类似方案。