Locate More Sensors with Fewer Anchors in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose to integrate Out-of-Range information with the multi-lateration scheme to resolve location ambiguities of unknown sensor nodes, which can not gain sufficient reference nodes information due to an insufficient number of reference nodes or low level of network density. The proposed scheme is based on the observation that, if a node, N1, is out of the transmission range of another node, N2, the distance between N1 and N2 must be larger than a given threshold value. This information, referred as “Out-of-Range” can then be used to eliminate location ambiguities of some unknown nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can significantly increase the number of resolved sensor nodes, compared with multi-lateration schemes when the network connectivity is low. In contrast, when node density is high, the proposed scheme can discover the same number of nodes with a smaller number of anchor nodes.KeywordsSensor NodeWireless Sensor NetworkTransmission RangeNetwork ConnectivityAnchor NodeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.