Accident aware localization mechanism for wireless sensor networks

• Improving the location accuracy with off-the-shelf hardware.
• Active location detection and correction with low computing complexity for each sensor.
• The proposed ALCP mechanism is energy efficient for location-error detection and correction.
• Complete analysis and extensive simulations to verify the performance of the ALCP.

Accurate location information is important for event reporting, coverage estimation, and location-aware routing in a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). Recently, a number of range-free localization schemes have been proposed to provide each static sensor with location information, which is represented by a rectangular region. However, most WSN applications are applied in outdoor environments where the sensors’ location regions could be incorrect due to sudden accidents. This paper proposes an Active Location Correction Protocol, called ALCP, for detecting and correcting the occurrence of location error based on the bounding box technology. Performance study reveals that applying the ALCP to improve the location accuracies can enhance the performance of the well-known GPSR routing in terms of routing length, sensing coverage, and packet arrival rate.