Location Estimation Scheme using Connectivity Constraints for Wireless Ad Hoc Sensor Networks

Abstract

The paper proposes a method to estimate the location of nodes in a sensor network. The network has a few nodes whose locations are accurately known. The other nodes estimate their location based on neighborhood relationships gathered by them through message exchanges over a wireless ad hoc network. The paper shows that by incorporating non-neighbor constraints, one can substantially improve the accuracy of location estimation as compared to only utilizing neighbor relationships. The expected location estimation error is analytically derived for a certain regular deployment. For other deployments, empirical evaluation of the proposed scheme shows that the node locations can be estimated accurately without the need for any specialized hardware. The paper proposes a method to estimate the location of nodes in a sensor network. The network has a few nodes whose locations are accurately known. The other nodes estimate their location based on neighborhood relationships gathered by them through message exchanges over a wireless ad hoc network. The paper shows that by incorporating non-neighbor constraints, one can substantially improve the accuracy of location estimation as compared to only utilizing neighbor relationships. The expected location estimation error is analytically derived for a certain regular deployment. For other deployments, empirical evaluation of the proposed scheme shows that the node locations can be estimated accurately without the need for any specialized hardware.