Path planning algorithms for mobile anchors towards range-free localization

• Proposed a distributed range-free movement strategy for mobile anchor to localization sensors in a connected network.
• Improvements in terms of both path length and localization accuracy are shown.
• Proposed another movement strategy for mobile anchor, localizes all the sensors lying in a rectangular region.
• Improvement of path length is shown theoretically compared to the existing methods.

The objective of path planning for a mobile anchor is to find the path of minimum length that the anchor traverses to localize all sensors. The challenge is to design a movement strategy which reduces path length while meeting the requirements of a good range-free localization technique. A novel deterministic movement strategy is proposed in this paper that reduces path length and uses an existing range-free localization scheme which yields good positional accuracy. The mobile anchor moves in a hexagonal pattern to localize all the sensors which form a connected network. We compare performance of our algorithm with an existing path planning algorithm in terms of both path length and localization accuracy. Simulation results show that even in presence of irregular radio propagation, our algorithm achieves full localization. We have proposed another movement strategy for a mobile anchor using same hexagonal pattern to localize all the sensors lying in a rectangular region. Improvement in path length is shown theoretically compared to existing path planning schemes.