APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Palakkad Cluster Research Conclave-2019,

Hoisted by N S S College of Engineering, Palakkad, India on 24th May 2019

CLOCK SYNCHRONIZATION USING LCM WITH ENERGY EFFICIENT

CLUSTERING

Vincy V
PG scholar, NSS College of Engineering, Palakkad
vincyvictanand@gmail.com

Dr.Asha T S
Professor, Electronics and Communication Engineering, NSS college of Engineering, Palakkad
ashapkumar@rediffmail.com

ABSTRACT

Recently, Consensus based Clock Synchronization (CCS) algorithms have gained much attention in wireless
sensor networks due to its simplicity, distributed nature and robustness. Time synchronization is important in both
wired and wireless network. In this research we propose a clock synchronization by least common multiple (CSLCM)
with an efficient cluster head selection based on energy consumption. The proposed CSLCM enables the nodes to reach
a network synchronization time by calculating the least common multiple of their Clock Time Period (CTP) and
removes clock offset and clock skew among the nodes. Simulation results show that, the improved CSLCM algorithm is
more efficient compared to the ordinary CSLCM in terms of synchronization error.

KEY WORDS :Consensus clock synchronization, clock skew, synchronization error

1. INTRODUCTION Another set of protocols are consensus based protocols

Wireless networks are an increasingly
important medium for distributed computation. Time
synchronization is essential in sensor networks since
due to change in external environment the inbuilt clock
may vary. Each node has an inbuilt clock which is set
to a common clock before deployment. Sometimes
after the deployment of nodes their clock time may
change due to different climatic conditions like
temperature and humidity. There may be change in the
crystal oscillators of the node because of aging and
also due to manufacturing process. Therefore for
collision free data transfer and for real time data
monitoring, the sensor nodes should be well
synchronized in time with their inbuilt clocks aligned
to same time.
Various clock synchronization uses an external
reference clock to which all the other node
synchronize.In these protocols, either the hardware
clock or virtual clock is modified to synchronize with
the network synchronization time. In this
synchronization protocol there is a chance for inherent
error each time the clock value is updated. This error
propagates to all the other nodes which results in
greater accumulative error. Whereas some protocols
modify the clock recursively to achieve
synchronization. These protocols converges to network
synchronization time with greater accuracy but the
main problem of this protocol is greater overheads.
that do not use external and internal reference time.
The network synchronization time is set, based on
agreement between the nodes. In this type of protocol
network synchronization time could be set to either the
fastest clock of the network or to the average time of
the nodes in a network.
In this paper, we propose the Clock Synchronization
using Least Common multiple (CSLCM) protocol with
energy efficient clusterong to synchronize the sensor
node clock time period CTP. The proposed method do
not have a reference clock to which the network
synchronizes, so the accumulative error is nil. The
formation of clusters and the application of CSLCM,
reduces the communication overhead to a great extent.
In CSLCM the nodes calculates the Least common
multiple (LCM) of the CTPs, which is the network
synchronization time. The synchronization is carried at
two levels, Intra cluster synchronization and Inter
cluster synchronizaton
2. RELATED WORKS.
Some of the clock value based clock synchronization
protocols are discussed in this section. The
synchronization based on clock value propagation can
be classified into
a. Progressive synchronization.
b. Consensus synchronization.

1
APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Palakkad Cluster Research Conclave-2019,
Hoisted by N S S College of Engineering, Palakkad, India on 24th May 2019
The progressive synchronization method has a
reference clock value which is passed to other nodes
without any alteration. In this synchronization method
there is a reference node which initiates the
synchronization process and the reference node’s clock
value is propagated to all the other nodes. All the other
nodes change their clock value according to the
reference value. In consensus synchronization there is
an agreement between the nodes. All the nodes agree to
synchronize to a particular clock value.
Progressive synchronization can be further divided into
A. Centralized progressive method.
B. Decentralized progressive method.
In Centralized progressive method the network
topology is in the form of a tree with all the nodes
having hierarchy. In Decentralized progressive method
the topology is either a chain or a mesh network and
there is no hierarchy. 2LCHP [5] is a Decentralized
progressive method type of protocol. In this protocol, a
reference node floods the network with the
synchronization packet. The neighbors follow this
reference clock time and synchronize with their
neighbors using 3 time stamps and 2 flags. This
protocol is robust to node failure. The communication
overhead is larger for this protocol.In AOTSP [6], only
a ‘time transformation function’ is used to map the
local time of the node to the global time of the
reference node. Though it has low communication
overhead, the scalability is poor due to high
accumulative effect.
In the case of Centralized progressive method the
reference clock parameters are propagated in a
hierarchy with the root node initiating the process. The
network follows a tree topology. In TPSN[7] protocol,
Synchronization consists of 2 phases ‘level discovery
phase’ and ‘synchronization phase’. The TPSN
protocol is a state of art protocol wherein the hierarchy
is set up using the level discovery packets. The level
discovery packet is initiated at the root node, the level
is incremented by the neighbors who receive this level
discovery packet and propagates down a tree. TPSN
requires round trip synchronization messages so it is
much slower. Data aggregation tree DAT[8] is a faster
protocol. It is a single pass protocol with tree topology.
In Consensus synchronization the clock value is not
based on reference node but the clock value is taken
based upon agreement with all the nodes in the
network. Maximum time synchronization protocol[9] is
a consensus based protocol. In MTS all the nodes agree
to adapt to fastest clock in the network. Average time
synchronization protocol[10] is also a consensus based
protocol. In case of ATSP , the nodes agrees to adapt
the average time of the network. If x i(t ) represents the
local time of a node Vi and xj(t) is the local time of a
node Vj then both the clocks agree to update their
clocks to (xi(t) +xj(t))/ 2 . For two nodes to update their
clock for a single time, 3 packets are exchanged
between them. Thus in case of ATSP there is a high
communication overhead. In MTS, the neighboring
nodes exchange 4 time stamps to know each other’s
clock skew. A consensus is reached to follow the
fastest clock among the two nodes. But MTS
convergence time increases linearly with increasing
number of nodes. WMTS [9]has faster convergence
rate as compared to ATSP. The MTS [9] and WMTS
[9] protocols assume static topology, but the nodes
may not be static due to manual or automatic position
adjustment or due to addition or deletion of the nodes
from the network .In the presence of communication
delays the ATSP diverges therefore RoATS [11] was
to overcome the clock discrepancies in the presence of
communication delay. Though these protocols based
on consensus have lower computational complexity
there is higher communication overhead. In
CDSDBT[12], the communication overhead is reduced
considerably. It is also a consensus based protocol,
which divides the nodes into ‘synchronization
participation’(SP) nodes and ‘synchronization
initiation’(SI)nodes. The SI nodes synchronize with
their average value. The SP are active only if there is a
message from SI nodes. Random weighted genetic
algorithm is used to select the SI nodes based on
chromosome mapping.
The proposed CSLCM method is a consensus based
synchronization, wherein all the nodes agree to
calculate the LCM of the CTPs of the nodes for
network synchronization.
2. BLOCK DIAGRAM OF ENERGY
EFFICIENT CSLCM.
The block diagram for improved CSLCM is shown in
Fig. 1. There are 2 steps in the proposed CSLCM
method. The first step in CSLCM is to organize the
randomly deployed nodes into clusters. The second
step is to synchronize the nodes. The synchronization
process carried among the cluster members is termed
as intra cluster synchronization and the synchronization
among the cluster heads is termed as inter cluster
synchronization. Both the former and the latter
together, form the network synchronization. In the
improved clustering algorithm, advanced LEACH
algorithm is used for the selection of cluster heads. .
The improved algorithm is mainly manifested in
selecting cluster-heads with the new cluster-heads
formula and avoiding the randomness of cluster-heads
election. After the start of the algorithm, the region
node is divided into high energy nodes and low energy
nodes. Then considering the residual energy and the
distance of the nodes, the new cluster-heads election
formula is used to elect the cluster heads. We propose,
the synchronization of the nodes, which is a two level
process. The first level of synchronization is the
intracluster synchronization. It is among the cluster
members and their respective cluster head. The second
level of synchronization is the intercluster
synchronization. It is among the cluster heads.
2
APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Palakkad Cluster Research Conclave-2019,
Hoisted by N S S College of Engineering, Palakkad, India on 24th May 2019
Figure 1.Block diagram of Improved CSLCM
2.1 Improved clustering algorithm based on energy
consumption.
The improved algorithm is mainly manifested in
selecting cluster-heads with the new cluster-heads
formula and avoiding the randomness of cluster-heads
election. After the start of the algorithm, the region
node is divided into high energy nodes and low energy
nodes. Then considering the residual energy and the
distance of the nodes, the new cluster-heads election
formula is used to divide the whole networks into
clusters. After that, it will wait for the cluster nodes to
complete data communication. . The nodes are divided
into ordinary nodes and advanced nodes. α represents
the part that the energy is higher than the ordinary
node. m represents the percentage of advanced nodes.
Padv represents the probability that the advanced node is
elected to the cluster-heads. Pnrm represents the
probability that the common node is elected to the
cluster-heads[2]
Pnrm= p/(1+ α*m) ......(1)
Padv = p*(1+α)/ (1+α*m)……(2)
Taking into account the factors of energy and distance,
we make a change to LEACH threshold values and
give a new formula T(n). The purpose is to avoid the
cluster-heads node death due to too low energy, at the
same time, we use (1) and (2) to improve the
distribution of nodes. The following T(n) formula is as
follows:
For ordinary nodes:
….(3)
For advanced nodes:
…….(4)
In (3) and (4), where Pbnrm = b ∗ Pnrm is the weight of
Pnrm, Pbadv = b ∗ Padv is the weight of Padv, and b
represents a weighted proportional parameter,
depending on the size of the networks to assign b
different values. Its range is (0, 1), Ecurrent, Estart, dcurrent,
and dmax, respectively, represent the residual energy of
nodes and the initial energy of nodes and the distance
of the node from the sink node and the longest distance
between the node from the sink node. u, v represents
the proportion coefficient, its range is 0 < u < 1 and 
0 < v < 1 .Equations (3) and (4) improvements are
considering the energy consumption proportion of
small and big proportion of the distance of the node.
2.2 Intracluster synchroniation.
Once the nodes are formed into clusters and a cluster
head is elected, the synchronization process starts.
Intracluster synchronization is the synchronization
among the cluster members and its cluster head. Before
applying CSLCM, every node in a cluster transmits its
CTP to its cluster head. The cluster head collects all the
CTPs from its members and then broadcasts it within
the cluster. Each cluster member calculates the Least
Common Multiple (LCM) of these CTP. The value is
same for all the cluster members and the cluster head
belonging to a cluster. The LCM value is the
intracluster synchronization time S t. The cluster
members need not change their clocks but they should
know only the multiple value which is referred as
intracluster synchronization factor (IntraSF) γi with
respect to their own CTP and S t. All the cluster
members have to start their clocks at the same time to
complete St at same instant of time. So a process start
signal from the cluster head initiates the start of the
synchronization process. By the end of St, the cluster
members synchronized to a common time. This also
eliminates the clock offset among the cluster members
as all the nodes start from a common point. At the end
of the intracluster synchronization time St, all the
nodes arrive at the same instant of time by their own
frequency as the step size to reach St assuming the
propagation delay is constant among the cluster
members. The communication is only between the
cluster head and its cluster member when
synchronization takes place at the cluster level. There
is no communication between the cluster members
during intracluster synchronizaton. Therefore the
communication overhead is greatly reduced. In Fig. 4
there are 4 nodes V1, V2,V3 and V4 with their clock
value represented by x1 (t),x2(t),x3(t) and x4(t) . The
IntraSF for the nodes are γ1, γ2 , γ3 and γ4
respectively.IntraSF indicates the step size of the node
to reach St . They are integers which are multiplied
with the CTP to get the S t value. Since it is a whole
3
APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Palakkad Cluster Research Conclave-2019,
Hoisted by N S S College of Engineering, Palakkad, India on 24th May 2019
multiple of the clock time, the clock skew will be
compensated perfectly.
……………………(5)
2.3 Intercluster synchroniation.
Each cluster is synchronized with a different
Intracluster synchronization time St. Therefore each
cluster head is also synchronized with different S t. In
other words, the Intracluster synchronization time of
every cluster is represented by its cluster head. We
assume that each cluster head can reach the base
station.
Let the cluster heads be labeled as CHj, j = 1, 2, … , K,
where K are the number of cluster heads in the
network. Each of the cluster head CH1, CH2 ……..CHK
is synchronized to S t1, St2....... Stk respectively and
sends its Stj to the base station. The base station
collects all the values from individual cluster heads and
broadcasts the collective information to the cluster
heads. The cluster heads apply the CSLCM method,
which is the LCM of S t1, St2…… Stk to obtain a
common Intercluster synchronization time C t. The base
station signals the start of Intercluster synchronization
process.
The Intercluster synchronization is the second tier of
synchronization. At this level, as the communication is
only between base station and cluster heads, the cluster
heads do not communicate with each other. This will
further reduce the communication overhead at this
level
μj be the Inter SF which indicates the step size for the
cluster head to reach Cj.
……………………………(6)
2.4 Network synchroniation.
After the first level of synchronization, i.e. Intracluster
synchronization, each cluster head CHj had
synchronized to Stj. After the second level of
synchronization, i.e. Intercluster synchronization
among the cluster heads, each cluster head has
Intercluster synchronization time C t. Each cluster head
CHj retains the both the values, Ct and Stj . Now the
network synchronization time, for the network is Ct
.This must be passed on from the cluster head to its
respective cluster members, so that the cluster
members are also synchronized to Ct.
3. ERROR ANALYSIS.
The synchronization error ε is analyzed at two levels.
At the first level we calculate the average cluster
synchronization error, denoted by εc. At the second
level, the average network synchronization error ε n is
analyzed considering the intercluster synchronization
and intracluster synchronization.
Consider a cluster size of M nodes, in each cluster,
which have synchronized to S t . The intra cluster
synchronization error is given by
……………………………..(11)
Where is the initial clock value .
αi is the clock skew.
γ1 is the intra synchronization factor.
b is the scaling constant of γ.
Consider K clusters in a network with the size of each
cluster being M. Each cluster is synchronized to a
value of St at the first level and at the second level the
clusters get synchronized to the C t. Finally the
Intercluster synchronization becomes the network
synchronization time for all the nodes in the network.
So the network is synchronized to Ct .
The average network synchronization error is given by
……………………(12)
Where a and b are the scaling constants of and
respectively.
is the inter synchronization factor.
4. SIMULATION RESULT AND
ANALYSIS.
The improved CSLCM was simulated using MATLAB
2018a. We have considered the network of 100 nodes.
εc and εn are used to compare the performance of
improved CSLCM with ordinary CSLCM at the cluster
level and at the network level respectively. For the
simulation of CSLCM, we have assumed constant
propagation delay between the nodes.To see the
variations in the behavior of the two protocols namely
CSLCM and improved CSLCM to different input
values, we have generated random values from . The
random values generated are taken as the CTPs of
nodes with the unit of μs. The CSLCM and improved
CSLCM are analyzed over 2 different ranges [0.3, 0.6],
and [0.6, 0.9]. The standard deviation σ is varied
between 0.1 and 10 in every range which serves as
inputs to CSLCM.
4
APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Palakkad Cluster Research Conclave-2019,
Hoisted by N S S College of Engineering, Palakkad, India on 24th May 2019

In Fig 2and Fig 3 we have plotted the average cluster

synchronization error εc and in Fig.4 and Fig5 we have
plotted the average network synchronization error ε n.
As σ increases, εc and εn also increase for both CSLCM
and improved CSLCM for all the ranges. The larger σ
value indicates, that the input CTPs deviate from each
other by large amount. There is an increase in εc in
CSLCM as the LCM value also increases for higher σ.
There is an increase in εc and εn for both improved
CSLCM and CSLCM as the range increases and it is
the highest in the range [0.6, 0.9]. From this, we can
infer that, both the methods work well, when the input
values are closely spaced and belong to smaller input
range.Fig 6 shows the number of alive nodes.

Figure 4.Average network synchronization error

[0.3-0.6].

Figure 2.Average cluster synchronization error

Figure5.Average network synchronization

error[0.6-0.9].

Figure 6.No of alive nodes.

Figure 3.Average cluster synchronization error.

5
3. CONCLUSIONS
The Improved CSLCM for clock synchronization is a
consensus based method, wherein the nodes agree to
synchronize to the LCM of CTPs of the nodes. The
synchronization was carried at two levels. At the first
level, the nodes within a cluster synchronize and in the
second level the cluster heads synchronize. Having two
level of synchronization reduces the communication
and computation overhead. The proposed method is
simple to implement. The nodes synchronize to a
common time without changing their CTP. They use
their own CTP to calculate γ and μ to reach network
synchronization. The convergence time for the entire
network is Ct. The clock offset and clock skew among
the nodes is removed simultaneously. Since an Energy
efficient clustering is used nodes life time is increased
and cluster head is selected efficiently.Since nodes
forms balance clusters and number of dead nodes is
less the synchronization error is reduced considerably.
REFERENCES
1. Nikhath Tabassum, Geetha D. Devanagavi,
Rajashekhar C. Biradar. Clock
synchronization in wireless sensor networks
using least common multiple. Int. J. Electron.
Commun. (AEÜ) 2017.
2. M. Ben Salah, A. Boulouz. Energy Efficient
Clustering Based on LEACH.IEEE Trans
Wireless Communication 2017.
3. LI XingGuo WANG JunFeng, Bai Lin.
LEACH Protocol and its Improved Algorithm
in Wireless Sensor Network. International
Conference on Cyber-Enabled Distributed
Computing and Knowledge Discovery.IEEE
2016.
4. Ma Tao, Xu Zhanqi, Hempel Michael, Peng
Dongming, Sharif Hamid. Performance
analysis of a novel low complexity high
precision timing synchronization method for
wireless sensor networks. IEEE Trans
Wireless Communication2014.
5. Huang Ge, Zomaya Albert Y, Delicato Flavia
C, Pires Paulo F. Long term and large scale
time synchronization in wireless sensor
networks. Computer Communication 2014.
6. Huang Ge, Zomaya Albert Y, Delicato Flavia
C, Pires Paulo F. An accurate on-demand time
synchronization protocol for wireless sensor
networks. Parallel Distributed Computation
2012.
7. Ganeriwal S, Kumar R, Srivastava MB.
Timing-sync protocol for sensor networks. In:
Proceedings of the 1st international
conference on embedded networked sensor
systems-ACM; 2003.
8. Huang Hai-ping, Wang Ru-chuan, Li 3 Liu,
Sun Li-juan, Li Wen-feng. Time
synchronization algorithm of wireless sensor
networks based on data aggregation tree. Sci
Direct 2010.
9. He Jianping, Chang Peng, Shi Ling, Chan
Jiming, Sun Youxian. Time synchronization
in wireless sensor networks: a max-value
based consensus approach. IEEE Trans
Autom Control 2014.
10. Wu Jianshe, Jiao Licheng, Ding Ranran.
Average time synchronization in wireless
sensor networks by pairwise messages.
Compution Communication 2012.
11. Garone Emanuele, Gasparri Andrea,
Lamonaca Francesco. Clock synchronization
protocol for wireless sensor networks with
bounded communication delays. Automatica
2015.
12. Panigrahi Niranjan, Khilar Pabitra Mohan. An
evolutionary based topological optimization
strategy for consensus based clock
synchronization protocols in wireless sensor
network.SwarmEvol Comput 2015.
13. Panigrahi Niranjan, Khilar Pabitra Mohan.
Multi-hop consensus time synchronization
algorithm for sparse wireless sensor network:
a distributed constraint-based dynamic
programming approach. Ad-Hoc Network
2017.
14. Yildirim Kasim Sinan, Carli Ruggero,
Schenato Luca. Adaptive control based clock
synchronization in wireless sensor networks.
In: European control conference (ECC); 2015.