Discrete Probabilistic DV-Hop: Reengineering high accuracy range-free WSN localization

One of the most important aspects of a WSN is its localization scheme. Adequate accuracy, complexity, timing, and vulnerability to environment pitfalls are all worth considering parameters. Here, we propose Discrete Probabilistic DV-Hop, an enhancement to DV-Hop, a well-known range-free WSN localization algorithm, aiming to improve both its localization accuracy and complexity. One should note that DV-Hop is a range-free initial position estimator and can be accompanied with other refinement algorithms to farther improve its localization accuracy. Extensive simulations show that the proposed algorithm, although with reduced complexity, usually sticks to the same localization accuracy as DV-Hop and sometimes even outperforms it. The best accuracy achievable is 1/5 of radio range, with much less vulnerability to topological features than DV-Hop.