Neighbor constraint assisted distributed localization for wireless sensor networks

Localization is one of the most significant technologies in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) since it plays a critical role in many applications. The main idea in most localization methods is to estimate the sensor-anchor distances that are used by sensors to locate themselves. However, the distance information is always imprecise due to the measurement or estimation errors. In this work, a novel algorithm called neighbor constraint assisted distributed localization (NCA-DL) is proposed, which introduces the application of geometric constraints to these distances within the algorithm. For example, in the case presented here, the assistance provided by a neighbor will consist in formulating a linear equality constraint. These constraints can be further used to formulate optimization problems for distance estimation. Then through some optimization methods, the imprecise distances can be refined and the localization precision is improved.