A Boundary-Node based Localization Scheme for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, node location information is critical for many applications. In this paper we propose a novel boundary node based localization scheme for location discovery in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. We make use of a small number of high-end beacon nodes, which have more energy supply and a larger transmission range than other sensor nodes. Our scheme initially determines the locations of boundary nodes, which are nodes located in the coverage boundary of a beacon node. Other nodes then estimate their locations with the help of the boundary nodes and the beacon nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme performs much better than an existing scheme in terms of the localization error and the standard deviation of the error.