Projection-based localization for underwater sensor networks with consideration of layers

Because the global positioning system (GPS) employed in the terrestrial environment does not work in the underwater environment, a localization scheme should be properly designed for such an environment, in particular, the underwater sensor network (UWSN). Focusing on this issue for UWSNs, a scheme called projection-based underwater localization (PUL) is proposed in this paper. PUL applies a projection method to transform the three-dimension (3D) localization problem into a two-dimension (2D) one with consideration of layers to find the coordinate of a node using three reference nodes. By doing so, PUL is able to minimize computation and communication overheads while achieving high accuracy. Investigated via simulations, we show that PUL significantly outperforms some closely related schemes in the literature in terms of localization coverage, localization error, and communication cost.