Stochastic Switching of Power Levels can Accelerate Self-Organized Synchronization in Wireless Networks with Interference

Studies on wireless network synchronization based on the theory of coupled oscillators largely ignore the interference caused by the in-band synchronization signals exchanged between nodes. We show that such interference can play a key role and gain two insights: First, increasing the node transmission power does not necessarily lead to faster synchronization. Second, synchronization can be accelerated by randomly switching between two power levels while maintaining the overall average power consumption. This approach temporarily boosts the network connectivity with negligible impact on the average interference. The special case with one of the power levels being zero links our approach to the known concept of stochastic coupling used in convergence proofs. In summary, our work suggests that a randomization of the coupling - e.g., using fewer but stronger synchronization signals - can have benefits for self-organizing synchronization in networks with interference.