A New Distributed Localization Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

Node localization in wireless sensor networks (WSN) is treated as a functional dual of target tracking from a novel perspective in the paper. Different from the traditional tracking problem in WSN, using the static location-ware node to estimate the moving target, the mobile node is used to help unknown nodes to accurately discover their positions. A new node localization scheme virtual beacons-energy ratios localization (VB-ERL) and its refinements for the WSN are presented. In the scheme, the mobile node moves in the surveillant field based on the Gauss-Markov mobility model and periodically broadcasts the information packets. Each static unknown node receives the virtual beacons and energy in its sensing range, and estimates its location by finding the intersection of a set of hyper-spheres. Simulation results show the proposed scheme is efficient.