Advances on localization techniques for wireless sensor networks: A survey

Localization in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is regarded as an emerging technology for numerous cyber-physical system applications, which equips wireless sensors with the capability to report data that is geographically meaningful for location based services and applications. However, due to the increasingly pervasive existence of smart sensors in WSN, a single localization technique that affects the overall performance is not sufficient for all applications. Thus, there have been many significant advances on localization techniques in WSNs in the past few years. The main goal in this paper is to present the state-of-the-art research results and approaches proposed for localization in WSNs. Specifically, we present the recent advances on localization techniques in WSNs by considering a wide variety of factors and categorizing them in terms of data processing (centralized vs. distributed), transmission range (range free vs. range based), mobility (static vs. mobile), operating environments (indoor vs. outdoor), node density (sparse vs. dense), routing, algorithms, etc. The recent localization techniques in WSNs are also summarized in the form of tables. With this paper, readers can have a more thorough understanding of localization in sensor networks, as well as research trends and future research directions in this area.