A Localization Technique for Mobile Sensor Networks Using Archived Anchor Information

One interesting issue in recent sensor network research is the application of sensor nodes to mobile objects, such as people or animals, to gather non-stationary information. Apparently, locating mobile nodes is essential in many of the mobile sensor applications. Although several localization techniques have been proposed to locate mobile nodes, the mechanisms are usually based on many impractical assumptions, and mobility pattern of the mobile object is seldom considered. In this paper, we propose a practical and yet simple mobile node localization system using nearby anchor information which contains absolute time and positions. A history of anchor information is used to characterize the mobility of mobile devices. The unknown node then calculates its position with the archived anchor using a regression model. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms previous methods under realistic conditions. We have also implemented the algorithm on real hardware, and diverse experiments were conducted to validate the feasibility of the proposed approach.