Fundamental Limitations and State-of-the-Art Solutions for Target Node Localization in WSNs: A Review

Abstract

With the advances in new technological trends and the reduction in prices of sensor nodes, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and their applications are proliferating in several areas of our society, such as healthcare, industry, farming, and housing. Accordingly, in recent years, attention to localization has increased significantly since it is one of the main facets of a WSN. In a nutshell, localization is the process in which the position of a sensor node is retrieved by exploiting measurements from and between sensor nodes. Several techniques of localization have been proposed in the literature with different localization accuracies, complexities, and, hence, applicabilities. The localization accuracy is limited by fundamental limitations, theoretical and practical, which restrict the localization accuracy regardless of the technique employed in the localization process. In this article, we pay special attention to such limitations from theoretical and practical points of view and provide a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art solutions that deal with such limitations. In addition, a discussion on the theoretical and practical limitations together with their recent solutions, remaining challenges, and perspectives is presented.