  This paper develops a fast, accurate and energy-efficient time
synchronization protocol in wireless sensor networks that operate in harsh
environments. The suggested protocol concept is based on an electrical physical
metaphor. The protocol treats the nodes times as the states of an
unconditionally stable discrete dynamical system that uses only single hop
communication. The system can terminate at a low number of message exchanges
while still in the transient phase. It can yield high quality time estimates
with accuracies that are fractions of the clock at which node communication
takes place. The synchronizer is developed and its capabilities are
demonstrated by simulation and physical experiments on the MICA-Z wireless
sensor network
