Hop-Count Based Node-to-Anchor Distance Estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Localization is one of the most important research issues in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Hop-count based localization has been proposed as a cost-effective alternative to the expensive hardware-based localization schemes. In this paper, we propose a new method to estimate distances between anchors and nodes based on hop-count information. Localization is then achieved using the estimated distances. Simulation results show that the performance of our proposed algorithm is much better than that of the DV-hop algorithm in terms of the node-to- anchor distance estimation and localization accuracy, and the improvement is proportional to the node density.