This dissertation addresses the target localization problem in wireless sensor networks
(WSNs). WSNs is now a widely applicable technology which can have numerous practical applications and offer the possibility to improve people’s lives. A required feature to many functions of a WSN, is the ability to indicate where the data reported by each sensor was measured. For this reason, locating each sensor node in a WSN is an essential issue that should be considered.
In this dissertation, a performance analysis of two recently proposed distributed localization algorithms for cooperative 3-D wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is presented. The tested algorithms rely on distance and angle measurements obtained from received signal strength (RSS) and angle-of-arrival (AoA) information, respectively. The measurements are then used to derive a convex estimator, based on second-order cone programming (SOCP) relaxation techniques, and a non-convex one that can be formulated as a generalized trust region sub-problem (GTRS). Both estimators have shown excellent performance assuming a static network scenario, giving accurate location estimates in addition to converging in few iterations.
The results obtained in this dissertation confirm the novel algorithms’ performance
and accuracy. Additionally, a change to the algorithms is proposed, allowing the study of a more realistic and challenging scenario where different probabilities of communication failure between neighbor nodes at the broadcast phase are considered. Computational simulations performed in the scope of this dissertation, show that the algorithms’ performance holds for high probability of communication failure and that convergence is still achieved in a reasonable number of iterations
