Photovoltaic Modules Monitoring Based on WSN With Improved Time Synchronization

In order to avoid clock skew in WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) for large-scale photovoltaic modules monitoring, an improved time synchronization algorithm, TSP-GDM (Time Synchronization Protocol with Gaussian Delay Model) is proposed in this paper. Interdependence of local time stamps is established between network nodes according to a linear clock model. Local exchange and share of local time stamps in nodes are achieved by means of wireless transmission. An estimation method with the Gaussian Delay Model is designed to deal with the estimation problems of the node clock offset. The synchronization accuracy of the proposed method is verified with the MATLAB simulation. It is found that TSP-GDM can be applied to synchronous topology of large-scale photovoltaic modules monitoring with a higher synchronization accuracy. Compared to RBS (Reference Broadcast Synchronization), TPSN (Timing-synchronization Protocol for Sensor Networks) and RTSP (Recursive Time-Sync Protocol for WSN), its synchronization accuracy in an inner layer has been increased by 22.57μs, 15.7μs and 4.26 μs respectively.