Acoustic passive localization algorithm based on wireless sensor networks

Target localization is a motivating application for wireless sensor networks (WSN). Compared to a centralized system for acoustic source localization, a distributed system has many advantages in terms of power consumption, response time and accuracy. This paper proposes a distributed acoustic passive localization method, which can provide adequate precision localization estimation with low computational complexity. The first step of the two-stage algorithm is to measure the azimuth angle based on the time delay of arrival (TDOA) computed by each participating WSN nodes in clusters. That can obtain high precision angle estimation but low precision range estimation. And in the second step the location of acoustic source is calculated from the angles measured above and geometry position of the two clusters. Then the accuracy of localization estimation is discussed in theory, and analyze the influence factors and localization error by simulation. The simulation results validate the performance of the proposed algorithm, and show the precision of localization estimation with dual clusters is superior to one cluster.