Sequential Localization Algorithm for Active Sensor Network Deployment

There has been a lot of work on localization for sensor networks. Most localization schemes assume an already deployed network. Very little research has been done for active sensor deployment with mobile robots. In this paper, we present a distributed sequential localization process which is tightly integrated with robotic sensor deployment. Being location-aware, sensors can be placed in advantageous locations to avoid big localization errors. In turn, the accurate localization result helps further sensor deployment. We compare our distributed sequential localization scheme with five existing localization algorithms, both through simulations and through repeated runs on a mote testbed. Results show that the distributed sequential localization algorithm produces comparable results to the state-of-the-art centralized localization algorithms. Experiments also show that pre-post processing plays important roles at getting good localization results for all localization algorithms