High Efficient Synchronization-on-demand Protocol of IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Network for Construction Monitoring

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology is currently being employed in the field of civil engineering, especially in the areas of structural monitoring and construction safety. When used in construction site safety, time-synchronization within the sensor network is required to obtain important correlations between events, such as the prevention of equipment collisions. Here, we develop a highly efficient time synchronization method for an ultra-precise localization system to prevent collision accidents at construction sites. Without interfering with the operation of the entire sensor network, the developed protocol can locally synchronize several nodes within 10 ms. By measuring the time uncertainty information through the time stamping, wireless sensor nodes can be synchronized with only two transmitted packages from the beacon or specific nodes. Based on this proposed approach, 0.8 micro-second synchronization error was experimentally achieved on an IEEE 802.15.4 platform. Employing the developed method, the localization system was implemented and experimentally examined to have accuracy within several centimeters in the range of 2 m. This localization system can be used to identify the location of different construction equipment. This work demonstrates a simple and efficient approach to obtain high accuracy, low communication overhead, and robust synchronization for most WSN platforms to be used in automated monitoring at construction sites.

Keywords

• Wireless sensor network
• synchronization
• ultrasonic localization
• Anti-collision system