TDOA-based distance estimation for mobile beacon-assisted localization in large-scale sensor networks

In large-scale sensor network, self-locating a sensor node is important in order to monitor events occurring in surroundings. A distance to a reference point is key information to estimate location of a sensor node. In this paper, we propose TDOA-based distance estimation to improve accuracy in a distance to a reference point where a mobile beacon broadcast its absolute position. For locating asynchronous sensor nodes, we first model a set of TDOA-based measured distances to a mobile beacon moving along the linear tracks. Based on the model, distance estimation adopts Gauss-Newton method to minimize square errors in measurements. Through simulation, the proposed scheme shows that it can provide high accuracy in distance estimation compared to our previous work [4].