Distributed direction-based localization in wireless sensor networks

  • Authors:

  • Sheng-Shih Wang;Kuei-Ping Shih;Chih-Yung Chang

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Information Network Technology, Chihlee Institute of Technology, Banciao 220, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Tamkang University, Tamshui 251, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Tamkang University, Tamshui 251, Taipei, Taiwan

  • Venue:
  • Computer Communications
  • Year:
  • 2007

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.24

Visualization

Abstract

Location awareness is an attractive research issue in the wireless sensor network (WSN). However, precise location information may be unavailable due to the constraint in energy, computation, or terrain. Additionally, several applications can tolerate the diverse level of inaccuracy in such geographic information. Thus, this paper presents a direction-based localization scheme, DLS, whose main goal is for each sensor to determine its direction rather than its absolute position. The direction we are concerned with is the one relative to the sink. Motivated by the proposed spatial locality property, DLS considers multiple messages received for a sensor to determine its direction. Furthermore, a novel scheme, anchor deployment strategy, is also proposed for the improvement of the estimated correctness in direction of the sensor within the communication range of the sink. With the aid of the virtual dual direction coordinate (VDDC) system, DLS is able to efficiently and precisely position sensors around the axes. We evaluate DLS via simulations in terms of various numbers of sensors and communication ranges for the scenarios with different numbers of directions. The average correct rates in DLS reach approximately 94%, 86%, and 81% for the networks with 4, 8, and 16 directions, respectively. DLS achieves outstanding performance for the high density networks as well. In addition, DLS also works well regardless of the sink placement. Overall, simulation results validate the practicality of DLS, and show that DLS can effectively achieve direction estimation.