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SENSYS
2009
ACM

Low-power clock synchronization using electromagnetic energy radiating from AC power lines

14 years 6 months ago
Low-power clock synchronization using electromagnetic energy radiating from AC power lines
Clock synchronization is highly desirable in many sensor networking applications. It enables event ordering, coordinated actuation, energy-efficient communication and duty cycling. This paper presents a novel low-power hardware module for achieving global clock synchronization by tuning to the magnetic field radiating from existing AC power lines. This signal can be used as a global clock source for batteryoperated sensor nodes to eliminate drift between nodes over time even when they are not passing messages. With this scheme, each receiver is frequency-locked with each other, but there is typically a phase-offset between them. Since these phase offsets tend to be constant, a higher-level compensation protocol can be used to globally synchronize a sensor network. We present the design of an LC tank receiver circuit tuned to the AC 60Hz signal which we call a Syntonistor. The Syntonistor incorporates a low-power microcontroller that filters the signal induced from AC power lines ge...
Anthony Rowe, Vikram Gupta, Ragunathan Rajkumar
Added 19 May 2010
Updated 19 May 2010
Type Conference
Year 2009
Where SENSYS
Authors Anthony Rowe, Vikram Gupta, Ragunathan Rajkumar
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