An Improvement of DV-Hop Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks

The node localization is an important problem for location-dependent applications of wireless sensor networks. The research has drawn wide attention in recent years. The localization can be categorized as range-free or range-based schemes based on whether the range information is used among the localization process. Because of the hardware limitations of the network devices, solutions in range-free localization are being pursued as a cost-effective alternative to more expensive range-based approaches. DV-Hop is one of the range-free localization algorithms using hop-distance estimate. In this paper, we develop a new estimation model and improve the DV-Hop algorithm by considering the relationships between the communication ranges and the hop-distances. This scheme needs no additional hardware support and can be implemented in a distributed way. Simulation results show the performance of the proposed algorithm is superior to that of the DV-Hop algorithm