A New Approach Towards Solving the Location Discovery Problem in Wireless Sensor Networks

Location discovery problem in wireless sensor networks (WSN) is the process that sensor nodes collaborate to determine their positions. To solve this problem, high-cost sensor nodes with known locations, called anchors, are required. We propose a novel bilateration locationing algorithm and an associated anchor deployment scheme that can reduce the number of required anchors and location errors. The novelty in the bilateration algorithm is that it generally requires only two neighbor sensors with known locations to determine a node's location. To make this algorithm effective in practice, we propose to deploy three anchors as a group. Therefore, sensors around the anchors can first locate themselves and then sensors that are far away can gradually determine their locations. We conduct theoretical analysis and extensive simulations. Comparing with the state-of-the-art location discovery approaches, our algorithm provides higher accurate location estimations with fewer anchors and lower communication cost