Very low cost sensor localization for hostile environments

Kui Wu, Chong Liu, Valerie King

Abstract: Sensor localization has become an essential requirement for realistic applications over wireless sensor networks. The stringent constraint on, hardware cost, however, makes localization in wireless sensor networks very challenging. In a hostile environment such as battlefield or forest fire monitoring system, sensors are short-lived since they may be destroyed. Therefore, to lower system cost, sensors within the hostile environment must be extremely simple and cheap. Also, it is financially undesirable to use powerful anchor nodes within the hostile area for sensor localization. We present a very low cost range-free sensor localization scheme that does not require any powerful anchor nodes within the deployment area. Our algorithm is based on random deployment which is the cheapest method for deploying a large number of sensors. Analysis and simulation evaluation are provided.