Overview of Localization Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

A sensor network's primary role is to collect and forward data to its intended endpoint. It's important to understand where the data we've gathered is held. In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), localization is widely used to determine the position of sensor nodes. In a WSN with thousands of nodes, installing GPS on each sensor node is costly, and GPS cannot provide precise position results in an in-building WSN. It's also impossible to manually configure location relation on each sensor node in a dense network. This is problematic since the sensor nodes must decide their current location without the use of special hardware such as GPS or manual setup. Because of localization methods, WSN implementation is cost-effective. The majority of localization methods rely on an anchor node or beacon node that knows where it is. Other nodes in the network use the anchor node's or beacon node's positioning information to find themselves. In this paper, we give a quick overview of the different types of localization strategies used in wireless sensor networks, as well as the issues and research gaps that still exist.