Localization in wireless sensor networks using tabu search and simulated annealing

Sensor localization is a fundamental and crucial issue for wireless sensor networks operation and management. Accurate self-localization capability is highly desirable in wireless sensor network. A fundamental problem in distance-based sensor network localization is whether a given sensor network is uniquely localizable or not. Flip ambiguity is a main problem that can make the sensor network not uniquely localized. It causes large errors in the location estimates. This paper proposes a method in which the localization is done through two steps. During the first step, tabu search (TS) is used to obtain an accurate estimation of the nodes' location. During the second step, simulated annealing algorithm (SAA) is used to refine the location estimates of those nodes that are likely to have flip ambiguity problem. The simulation results confirm that the proposed algorithm has better performance than that of the existing algorithms.