A local synchronization-based wireless system for power efficient ad-hoc networks

In a scalable ad-hoc network, which is deployed in a large area with many nodes, it is difficult to maintain global time synchronization among all nodes in a whole network. Considering this problem, a local synchronization-based system is presented to discover neighboring nodes in a scalable wireless network. With the proposed system, a whole ad-hoc network is composed of several subgroups and local time synchronization is maintained within each subgroup. For the proposed system, the transmitter and receiver operations of a node are presented to discover neighboring nodes. The most important parameter for power consumption is the duty cycle of a node, defined as the ratio between the receiver turn-on time and total considered time. The duty cycles of the proposed system and cyclic quorum-based power management (CQPM) are compared by analysis. In addition, the power consumptions of the proposed system and CQPM are compared by simulation. The results show that the proposed system can reduce the power consumption of a node significantly in a scalable ad-hoc network.