Data-driven Time Synchronization in Wireless Multimedia Networks

In many wireless multimedia applications, like speech enhancement or speaker localization, data sources need to be tightly synchronized. Synchronization is also a well-known problem for medium access control protocols of wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we unconventionally use the synchronization from a multimedia application to synchronize the wireless transmissions. From our analytical results, we derive a threshold for the synchronization accuracy below which the application synchronization could be used to drive a fixed-schedule time-division multiple access protocol. Above that threshold, Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance is preferable and results in higher throughput. For evaluation, we simulate a synchronization algorithm for acoustic sensor networks and derive stability as well as high-throughput regions.