A Methodology for Choosing Time Synchronization Strategies for Wireless IoT Networks

This summer we have published a new article about time synchronization for wireless sensor networks, applied to the field of IoT, in Sensors Open Access Journal. This journal has these statistics:

  • 2018 Impact Factor: 3.031
  • 5-year Impact Factor: 3.302
  • JCR category rank: 15/61 (Q1) in ‘Instruments & Instrumentation’

This article belongs to the Special Issue Topology Control and Protocols in Sensor Network and IoT Applications.

This article has a direct relationship with the thesis of our colleague Francisco Tirado-Andrés. This thesis investigates a methodology, and associated tools, to make it easier for all researchers to choose time synchronization protocols for specific WSNs.

For more information about this article please visit MDPI webpage.

Poster about Methodology for implementation of Synchronization Strategies for Wireless Sensor Networks

On the occasion of the II edition of the Symposium “Tell us your thesis” organized by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid I created a poster summary of my thesis.

Both the thesis and the poster are entitled “Methodology for implementation of Synchronization Strategies for Wireless Sensor Networks“.

In the poster I intend to explain the process that every researcher and/or developer must carry out to add synchronization tasks to his Wireless Sensor Network.

180216 Methodology for implementation of Synchronizatoin WSN
Methodology for implementation of Synchronizatoin WSN

First of all it is needed to know what is the objective of the user application in which we want to add temporary synchronization.

Based on the application we will have some requirements to fulfill. That is, each application will have different requirements regarding timing, maximum permissible error regarding temporal precision or accuracy, network topology, message distribution method, battery consumption and life time objectives, hardware resources of different nature and different price, etc.

Since there are many options and possible ways, a methodology is needed that helps the researcher and/or developer to obtain a solution, in order to achieve a time synchronization in their wireless sensor networks, which is adapted to the needs of the application.

The development of this methodology is the objective of this doctoral thesis.

Download the poster with full resolution [PDF 18 MB]

A new method of documentation: the Wiki

Clearly, the documentation takes time and is not the most rewarding task of the world, but if you think about the long term benefits of document perhaps it will motivate us a little more to do it. Code documentation , documentation for customers or just the internal documentation are essential due to these factors :

Knowledge Transfer

If you’re thinking that your world is limited to your work and your code can be like a work of Picasso, untouchable, you’re wrong . We all work as a team and I’m sure what you’re doing now , will be edit by someone else in the future. If that person has a complete documentation of everything done their learning will be much faster . Think about when you start an undocumented work : what would you like to know? What data would you need? Those are the questions you have to ask yourself to document your own work.

Practical importance

How many times we gone mad because we have to write a 40- pages inform at work? Imagine that we had already done most of the work and the only thing missing is what we like the most , copy and paste. Well, if we have a complete good working documentation , conducting or reporting deliverables is simply copy and edit some paragraphs of this documentation.

required-documents

Methodological importance

Doing things right is more important than just doing them.  When we do programs , designs or works that the rest will see we strive more . It may be for improving our image, because of embarrassment, or because are very cool , but the result is always better. If we look the collaborative side of the issue, that someone can see your documents allows the detection of errors and improves the quality of the final result.

Communication

Something that is vital in a company or working group is that everyone is aware about what everyone else is doing and the expetise areas of each other . Thus, knowledge sharing is much simpler .

Contingencies

This last point is obvious. If when an important problem happens we have  documentation, it won’t be panic spreading. Without this documentation, people would go crazy and take a long time to solve the problem. So look in this way, the document saves time.

Therefore, in the laboratory, we have created a Wiki to document our development projects. This is the first step in order to create a new culture of documentation in the lab, and finally, a high quality results.