Comparison of approaches to time-synchronous sampling in wireless sensor networks

•Two approaches to synchronized sampling are suggested: proactive and reactive.•The proactive approach integrates better with regular communication schemes.•The reactive approach is better suited for irregular communication.•At high signal frequencies the proactive approach yields better results.•Software interdependencies are reduced in the reactive approach.

Time synchronization is required in many data acquisition applications for sensor networks. A large variety of time synchronization protocols for wireless sensor networks has been suggested. Yet, setting up a sensor network for synchronized data acquisition based on those algorithms is not a trivial task. This paper outlines different approaches to time synchronous sampling in wireless sensor networks. The approaches are implemented on a wireless sensor network. Experiments are done to compare the signal quality of the signals acquired with the different approaches in terms of frequency error, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and total-harmonic-distortion (THD). Furthermore, the approaches are compared in terms of the effort required for communication and implementation.