A novel localization approach towards anchor to node in wireless sensor networks

The node localization is one of the most important research issues in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Traditionally, hop-count-based localization methods only take on integer value and have a same distance estimation to all of a node's one-hop neighbors. In this paper, a novel approach termed hop-count-based expectation of distance (HCED) algorithm is proposed. By partitioning an anchor's neighbor set into three disjoint subsets according to their hop-count values, the expectation of the distance from the anchor to the unknown node can be calculated. The distance between the anchor and the unknown node can be computed accurately via employing the expectation of the distance from the anchor to the unknown node and the distribution of neighbors of the unknown node. Simulation results demonstrate that the HCED algorithm is exceedingly precise and efficient and outperforms state-of-the-art methods.

I. Introduction

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a self-organized network composed of lots of sensor nodes distributed in a monitoring area. The locations of the nodes play an important role in a variety of the applications of WSNs. The measured data obtained by the nodes become meaningless if the locations of the nodes are unknown. The node localization becomes an indispensable research issue in WSNs [1]–[3].