Optimized anchor nodes placement for underground mine localization system based on ZigBee technology

Placement of anchor nodes is a main issue in ZigBee technology. Network lifetime and energy consumption are the two critical factors that need to be considered in underground mine localization system (UMLS). According to the complicated environment in coal tunnels, we proposed an optimal strategy based on two-tiered anchor nodes placement for UMLS, which minimizes the average energy consumption of anchor nodes and prolongs the ZigBee wireless networks lifetime (ZWNL). Simulation results show that the optimal anchor nodes placement strategy provide significant benefit over a commonly uniform placement scheme. And the numerical results prove that the two-tiered anchor nodes placement obviously outperform the one-tiered in terms of both network lifetime and average energy consumption.