Energy efficient source localization on a Manhattan grid wireless sensor network

For wireless sensor networks, many decentralized algorithms have been developed to address the problem of locating a source that emits acoustic or electromagnetic waves based on received signal strength. Among the motivations for decentralized algorithms is that they reduce the number of transmissions between sensors, thereby increasing sensor battery life. Whereas most such algorithms are designed for arbitrary sensor placements, such as random placements, this paper focuses on applications that permit a choice of sensor placement. In particular, to make communications costs small, it is proposed to place sensors uniformly along evenly spaced rows and columns, i.e., a Manhattan grid. For such a placement, the Midpoint Algorithm is proposed, which is a simple noniterative decentralized algorithm. The results of this paper show that Manhattan grid networks offer improved accuracy vs. energy tradeoff over randomly distributed networks. Results also show the proposed Midpoint Algorithm offers further energy savings over the recent POCS algorithm.