Hardware implementation of a centroid-based localization algorithm for mobile sensor networks

Abstract

In the context of mobile sensor networks many challenges arise, position estimation being perhaps the most important. Localization is paramount for any application that requires interpretation of the data in a physical context. Collected data has no physical meaning if we are not able to determine the location of the samples of the phenomena under study. The two main sources of power consumption for nodes are the communication and local data processing. In this work we directly target the second one. We present the integrated implementation of a new localization algorithm for mobile wireless sensor networks based on the well-known range-free Centroid method. The proposed architecture splits the original sampling period of the Centroid algorithm into temporal windows in order to maintain a record of past information during movement, allowing for the weighing of the anchors' coordinates. We dramatically reduce energy consumption by implementing this concept into a dedicated circuit in a 0.13µm process. We achieved an order of magnitude in energy reduction, dissipating only 1.45mW and still maintain flexibility.