Anchor selection for topology inference and routing in wireless sensor networks

Anchor-based ad-hoc networks utilize hop measurements to generate a virtual coordinate system for topology inference and routing applications. A common problem with such coordinate system is its sensitivity to anchor placement. We present a general formulation to the anchor node selection problem. Then, we relax the optimization problem by deriving an upper-bound of the objective function. We finally propose an iterative algorithm that consists in choosing additional anchor nodes based on the connectivity information provided by the current anchor set. Numerical simulations indicate that our anchor selection method is robust to missing measurements and improves network topology inference and routing performance.