Position Uncertainties in Range-free Wireless Sensor Network Localization

Zhen Feng, Wei Liu, Kanru Xu, Wenqing Cheng

Abstract: Evaluating position uncertainties is a fundamental problem of wireless sensor network localization. A constraint set, including both positive and negative constraints, is constructed to bound sensor position. By projecting the feasible region of this constraint set onto a 2D plane, the feasible scope of sensor position is computed to evaluate node position uncertainty. The projection result, called feasible geographic region (FGR), is approximated by its inner and outer polygon. The polygon approximation will converge to the actual FGR if we incrementally add more polygon vertices. A distributed algorithm is proposed to compute FGR. Finally, we study the impact of node position uncertainty upon a typical network application, target event detection. The feasible scope of target event position is computed even though the sensor position is not certain.