A Range Based Localization System in Multihop Wireless Sensor Networks: A Distributed Cooperative Approach

Abstract

In recent times although there is lot of research in field of localization application but very few aims at localization module with optimal energy consumption. Localization, being inevitable for a range of applications, is also a basis for many network operations such as data packet forwarding i.e. routing and sensing coverage in wireless sensor networks. With a range of application scenario, it is a challenging task to design a localization module for a wireless sensor network consisting of sensor nodes with limited capacity in terms of power, processing and storage etc. This paper presents a simple model of a range based localization system that employs distributed computing in a collaborative and cooperative manner. The aim of this work is to modify a range based localization algorithm to utilize scarce resources optimally along with improved performance by changing the inherent methodologies of position estimation. In this research work basically the role of a media access control scheme (MAC) in the localization module is investigated. A MAC is basically used to save the energy by reducing collisions and retransmission of range packets. Further, energy is conserved by restricting the coverage to a smaller part containing the neighbours up to certain hops and that is formed by dividing the whole network area into clusters. To analyse the performance spectrum, we have simulated the localization method under a variety of application scenarios and lead to the conclusion that this approach increases the efficiency of localization in wireless sensor networks. In the simulation process, every minute aspect of sensor network localization model including the topology, range, mobility, channel, propagation schemes etc. were considered and the performance was finally analyzed.