Robust Localization from Incomplete Local Information

We consider the problem of localizing wireless devices in an ad-hoc network embedded in a d-dimensional Euclidean space. Obtaining a good estimation of where wireless devices are located is crucial in wireless network applications including environment monitoring, geographic routing and topology control. When the positions of the devices are unknown and only local distance information is given, we need to infer the positions from these local distance measurements. This problem is particularly challenging when we only have access to measurements that have limited accuracy and are incomplete. We consider the extreme case of this limitation on the available information, namely only the connectivity information is available, i.e., we only know whether a pair of nodes is within a fixed detection range of each other or not, and no information is known about how far apart they are. Further, to account for detection failures, we assume that even if a pair of devices is within the detection range, it fails to detect the presence of one another with some probability and this probability of failure depends on how far apart those devices are. Given this limited information, we investigate the performance of a centralized positioning algorithm MDS-MAP introduced by Shang et al., and a distributed positioning algorithm, introduced by Savarese et al., called HOP-TERRAIN. In particular, for a network consisting of n devices positioned randomly, we provide a bound on the resulting error for both algorithms. We show that the error is bounded, decreasing at a rate that is proportional to R/Rc, where Rc is the critical detection range when the resulting random network starts to be connected, and R is the detection range of each device.Comment: 40 pages, 13 figure

Color Filtering Localization for Three-Dimensional Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Accurate localization for mobile nodes has been an important and fundamental problem in underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs). The detection information returned from a mobile node is meaningful only if its location is known. In this paper, we propose two localization algorithms based on color filtering technology called PCFL and ACFL. PCFL and ACFL aim at collaboratively accomplishing accurate localization of underwater mobile nodes with minimum energy expenditure. They both adopt the overlapping signal region of task anchors which can communicate with the mobile node directly as the current sampling area. PCFL employs the projected distances between each of the task projections and the mobile node, while ACFL adopts the direct distance between each of the task anchors and the mobile node. Also the proportion factor of distance is proposed to weight the RGB values. By comparing the nearness degrees of the RGB sequences between the samples and the mobile node, samples can be filtered out. And the normalized nearness degrees are considered as the weighted standards to calculate coordinates of the mobile nodes. The simulation results show that the proposed methods have excellent localization performance and can timely localize the mobile node. The average localization error of PCFL can decline by about 30.4% than the AFLA method.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, 2 table

A survey of localization in wireless sensor network

Localization is one of the key techniques in wireless sensor network. The location estimation methods can be classified into target/source localization and node self-localization. In target localization, we mainly introduce the energy-based method. Then we investigate the node self-localization methods. Since the widespread adoption of the wireless sensor network, the localization methods are different in various applications. And there are several challenges in some special scenarios. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of these challenges: localization in non-line-of-sight, node selection criteria for localization in energy-constrained network, scheduling the sensor node to optimize the tradeoff between localization performance and energy consumption, cooperative node localization, and localization algorithm in heterogeneous network. Finally, we introduce the evaluation criteria for localization in wireless sensor network

Efficient AoA-based wireless indoor localization for hospital outpatients using mobile devices

The motivation of this work is to help outpatients find their corresponding departments or clinics, thus, it needs to provide indoor positioning services with a room-level accuracy. Unlike wireless outdoor localization that is dominated by the global positioning system (GPS), wireless indoor localization is still an open issue. Many different schemes are being developed to meet the increasing demand for indoor localization services. In this paper, we investigated the AoA-based wireless indoor localization for outpatients’ wayfinding in a hospital, where Wi-Fi access points (APs) are deployed, in line, on the ceiling. The target position can be determined by a mobile device, like a smartphone, through an efficient geometric calculation with two known APs coordinates and the angles of the incident radios. All possible positions in which the target may appear have been comprehensively investigated, and the corresponding solutions were proven to be the same. Experimental results show that localization error was less than 2.5 m, about 80% of the time, which can satisfy the outpatients’ requirements for wayfinding

Toward Collinearity-Avoidable Localization for Wireless Sensor Network

In accordance with the collinearity problem during computation caused by the beacon nodes used for location estimation which are close to be in the same line or same plane, two solutions are proposed in this paper: the geometric analytical localization algorithm based on positioning units and the localization algorithm based on the multivariate analysis method. The geometric analytical localization algorithm based on positioning units analyzes the topology quality of positioning units used to estimate location and provides quantitative criteria based on that; the localization algorithm based on the multivariate analysis method uses the multivariate analysis method to filter and integrate the beacon nodes coordinate matrixes during the process of location estimation. Both methods can avoid low estimation accuracy and instability caused by multicollinearity

Robust Localization Algorithm Based on Best Length Optimization for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, a robust range-free localization algorithm by realizing best hop length optimization is proposed for node localization problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This algorithm is derived from classic DV-Hop method but the critical hop length between any relay nodes is accurately computed and refined in space WSNs with arbitrary network connectivity. In case of network parameters hop length between nodes can be derived without complicated computation and further optimized using Kalman filtering in which guarantees robustness even in complicated environment with random node communication range. Especially sensor fusion techniques used has well gained robustness, accuracy, scalability, and power efficiency even without accurate distance or angle measurement which is more suitable in nonlinear conditions and power limited WSNs environment. Simulation results indicate it gained high accuracy compared with DV-Hop and Centroid methods in random communication range conditions which proves it gives characteristic of high robustness. Also it needs relatively little computation time which possesses high efficiency. It can well solve localization problem with many unknown nosed in the network and results prove the theoretical analysis

A hybrid localization approach in 3D wireless sensor network

Location information acquisition is crucial for many wireless sensor network (WSN) applications. While existing localization approaches mainly focus on 2D plane, the emerging 3D localization brings WSNs closer to reality with much enhanced accuracy. Two types of 3D localization algorithms are mainly used in localization application: the range-based localization and the range-free localization. The range-based localization algorithm has strict requirements on hardware and therefore is costly to implement in practice. The range-free localization algorithm reduces the hardware cost but at the expense of low localization accuracy. On addressing the shortage of both algorithms, in this paper, we develop a novel hybrid localization scheme, which utilizes the range-based attribute RSSI and the range-free attribute hopsize, to achieve accurate yet low-cost 3D localization. As anchor node deployment strategy plays an important role in improving the localization accuracy, an anchor node configuration scheme is also developed in this work by utilizing the MIS (maximal independent set) of a network. With proper anchor node configuration and propagation model selection, using simulations, we show that our proposed algorithm improves the localization accuracy by 38.9% compared with 3D DV-HOP and 52.7% compared with 3D centroid