Localization Algorithms in Large-Scale Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks: A Quantitative Comparison

Recently underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) have drawn much attention because of their great value in many underwater applications where human operation is hard to carry out. In this paper, we introduce and compare the performance of four localization algorithms in UASNs, namely, distance vector-hop (DV-hop), a new localization algorithm for underwater acoustic sensor networks (NLA), large-scale hierarchical localization (LSHL), and localization scheme for large scale underwater networks (LSLS). The four algorithms are all suitable for large-scale UASNs. We compare the localization algorithms in terms of localization coverage, localization error, and average energy consumption. Besides, we analyze the impacts of the ranging error and the number of anchor nodes on the performance of the localization algorithms. Simulations show that LSHL and LSLS perform much better than DV-hop and NLA in localization coverage, localization error, and average energy consumption. The performance of NLA is similar to that of the DV-hop. The advantage of DV-hop and NLA is that the localization results do not rely on the number of anchor nodes; that is, only a small number of anchor nodes are needed for localization.