Distributed localization using mobile beacons in wireless sensor networks

A new distributed node localization algorithm named mobile beacons–improved particle filter (MB-IPF) was proposed. In the algorithm, the mobile nodes equipped with globe position system (GPS) move around in the wireless sensor network (WSN) field based on the Gauss-Markov mobility model, and periodically broadcast the beacon messages. Each unknown node estimates its location in a fully distributed mode based on the received mobile beacons. The localization algorithm is based on the IPF and several refinements, including the proposed weighted centroid algorithm, the residual resampling algorithm, and the markov chain monte carlo (MCMC) method etc., which were also introduced for performance improvement. The simulation results show that our proposed algorithm is efficient for most applications.