Minimal Transmission Power vs. Signal Strength as Distance Estimation for Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Autonomous localization of nodes in wireless sensor networks is essential to minimize the complex self-organization task and to enhance network lifetime. Known techniques such as distance estimation based on received signal strength are often inaccurate and produce outliers. We propose a new method to measure a distance using the minimal transmission power between a transmitting node and a receiving node. The determined distance is very precise and has a low variance. It is therefore suitable for localization which is exemplary demonstrated for the approximate "weighted centroid localization" algorithm