Minimal Transmission Power vs. Signal Strength as Distance Estimation for Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Autonomous localization of nodes in wireless sensor networks is essential to minimize the complex self-organization task and to enhance network lifetime. Known techniques such as distance estimation based on received signal strength are often inaccurate and produce outliers. We propose a new method to measure a distance using the minimal transmission power between a transmitting node and a receiving node. The determined distance is very precise and has a low variance. It is therefore suitable for localization which is exemplary demonstrated for the approximate "weighted centroid localization" algorithm