LHDV-HOP: An energy-effective range-free localization scheme in wireless sensor networks

Localization has been identified as one of key issues in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). The widely used localization technique is range-free algorithm, especially DV-HOP (Distance Vector Hop) algorithm. But the traditional DV-HOP has the following drawback: the large communications overhead wastes the nodes´ valuable energy, and limits the whole sensor network´s lifetime and scalability. To solve the above problem, LHDV-HOP (DV-HOP of Limited Hops) is proposed in this paper, in which a hop threshold, N is set to limit the flooding range, and furthermore, three anchor nodes with the best precision for localization are chosen among all anchors within the N hops, as reference points. Simulation results show that LHDV-HOP can decrease the energy consumption, and meanwhile, improve the localization accuracy.