An Area Localization Scheme for Underwater Sensor Networks

For large wireless sensor networks, identifying the exact location of every sensor may not be feasible and the cost may be very high. A coarse estimate of the sensors' locations is usually sufficient for many applications. In this paper, we propose an efficient Area Localization Scheme (ALS) for underwater sensor networks. This scheme tries to estimate the position of every sensor within a certain area rather than its exact location. The granularity of the areas estimated for each node can be easily adjusted by varying system parameters. All the complex calculations are handled by the powerful sinks instead of the sensors. This reduces the energy consumed by the sensors and helps extend the lifetime of the network.