Anchor-free localization in rapidly-deployed wireless sensor networks

In this paper we consider a wireless sensor network consisting of a single sink node at the center of a field of randomly distributed sensors. An anchor-free node localization algorithm is proposed in which the sink node imparts radial location information through the phased-array transmission of a series of beacons. The individual sensors use knowledge of received beacons and information from nearest neighbors to identify the sub-sectors in which they reside. This location information can then be used as the basis for an emergent routing algorithm. We present the localization algorithm, deduce the partition error analytically, and then provide simulation results. The results indicate that the localization performance improves with node density, and is robust against RSS measurement noise.