Implementation of a PSO Based Improved Localization Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are broadly employed in lots of applications. WSN is comprised of spatially dispersed sovereign devices enabled with sensors to examine some physical phenomenon. The node localization, which is to be responsive of nodes' location in the system, is a crucial component of numerous WSN functions and applications. Various localization algorithms have been proposed to precisely locate nodes in WSNs. The localization algorithms are normally categorized into range-based and range-free schemes based on range measurements. The range-based methods use exact computation measure (distance or time) among nodes in the network. So range-based methods need some additional hardware for such computation, thus expensive to be used in practice. Because of hardware constraints of sensor network devices, range-free methods are considered cost efficient alternatives. Though, these methods normally contain higher localization error in comparison with range-based methods. DV-Hop is an usual range-free method that use hop-based evaluation. In this article, we have modified DV-Hop method and applied a meta-heuristic (PSO) technique to overcome the positioning error. The algorithm has been implemented in MATLAB R2015a for the validation of results. The performance of implemented algorithm has been analyzed in terms of localization error, error variance, accuracy, and coverage. The results of modified algorithm confirm that our algorithm decreases the localization error and improved the localization accuracy as compared to DV-Hop and improved DV-Hop (IDV-Hop) algorithms.