Online sequential DV-hop localization algorithm for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

One of the main issues of wireless sensor networks is localization. Besides, it is important to track and analyze the sensed information. The technique of localization can calculate node position with the help of a set of designed nodes, denoted as anchors. The set density of these anchors may be incremented or decremented because of many reasons such as maintenance, lifetime, and breakdown. The well-known Distance Vector Hop (DV-Hop) algorithm is a suitable solution for localizing nodes having few neighbor anchors. However, existing DV-Hop-based localization methods have not considered the problem of anchor breakdown which may happen during the localization process. In order to avoid this issue, an Online Sequential DV-Hop algorithm is proposed in this paper to sequentially calculate positions of nodes and improve accuracy of node localization for multihop wireless sensor networks. The algorithm deals with the variation of the number of available anchors in the network. We note that DV-Hop algorithm is used in this article to process localization of nodes by a new optimized method for the estimation of the average distance of hops between nodes. Our proposed localization method is based on an online sequential computation. Compared with the original DV-Hop and other localization methods from the literature, simulation results prove that the proposed algorithm greatly minimizes the average of localization error of sensor nodes.