Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

A fundamental problem in wireless sensor networks is localization - the determination of the geographical locations of sensors. Most existing localization algorithms were designed to work well either in networks of static sensors or networks in which all sensors are mobile. In this paper, we propose two localization algorithms, MSL and MSL*, that work well when any number of sensors are static or mobile. MSL and MSL* are range-free algorithms - they do not require that sensors are equipped with hardware to measure signal strengths, angles of arrival of signals or distances to other sensors. We present simulation results to demonstrate that MSL and MSL* outperform existing algorithms in terms of localization error in very different mobility conditions. MSL* outperforms MSL in most scenarios, but incurs a higher communication cost. MSL outperforms MSL* when there is significant irregularity in the radio range. We also point out some problems with a well known lower bound for the error in any range-free localization algorithm in static sensor networks.