Localization Algorithm Based on the Relationship Between Trapezoidal Trajectory and Energy Consumption of Mobile Anchor Nodes

Node localization technology is increasingly receiving extensive attention from academia and industry due to its strong concealment and high fault tolerance in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Mobile anchor nodes (MANs) assisted localization is often used in existing WSNs. However, assisted localization based on MANs is still a challenging problem. On one hand, it is difficult to determine the number of anchor nodes (ANs) to support the energy required for the entire movement trajectory. On the other hand, unknown nodes (UNs) at the boundary region are difficult to obtain sufficient beacon information for localization. A localization algorithm based on the relationship between trapezoidal trajectory and energy consumption of MANs is proposed to solve this challenging problem in the current research. In the proposed algorithm, we design a trapezoidal trajectory based localization algorithm for MANs (TTLMA) to optimize the movement trajectory of ANs. At the same time, determine the number of ANs by analyzing the relationship between the initial energy of ANs and the energy required by the localization algorithm. Select an appropriate algorithm to locate UNs according to the number of beacon information received by them. We conducted multiple simulations to evaluate the proposed algorithm’s performance. The experimental results indicate that compared with five existing typical localization algorithms, the proposed algorithms have positive advantages in terms of localization error and coverage, with average localization error reduced by 0.15 m–1.16 m, average localization coverage improved by 8%–38%. Moreover, the energy consumption of the proposed algorithm is relatively low, requiring only one AN to traverse the designed trapezoidal trajectory.