Indoor localization strategy based on fault-tolerant area division for shipboard surveillance

Localization based on wireless sensor networks has been shown to be a promising application in ships. Although a considerable number of algorithms have been designed for low-overhead and high-accuracy localization, some problems have been ignored, such as interference in the shipboard environment and the method of using anchor-deploying. In this paper, we present a method for range-free localization called fault-tolerant area division (FAD) to deploy and divide the area in which precise indoor localization is required. Despite the limitations with respect to shipboard environmental interference, sensing irregularity, received signal strength variation, and other unavoidable factors, FAD has been shown to be reliable by improving the fault-tolerant mechanism. In addition, to address the scheme of anchor-node placement, which complicates the localization performance, this paper presents a new deployment strategy for the anchor nodes using optimization methods. This paper presents and analyzes an enhancement method using a series of simulations and real-world ship experiments. The result shows that a well-organized deployment and a fault-tolerant mechanism can make such localization method more reliable and compatible.