Localization of Sensor Nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have gained considerable attention in the past few years. The wireless sensor networks consist of individual nodes that are able to interact with their environment by sensing or controlling physical parameters; these nodes have to be collaborative to fulfill their tasks. Wireless sensor networks of thousands or tens of thousands of nodes are being deputed, and these numbers will continue to grow over time as wireless sensors become cheaper and more ubiquitous. The huge size of these networks is making human network moderation and monitoring extraordinarily difficult. In wireless networks, the size and the ad-hoc, even temporary nature of the network, precludes requiring a human administrator to set up each node in the network. So there is a great need for an automated network that is capable of self-configuration and monitoring, and this need will grow over time as networks grow larger.

Automatic estimation of physical location of the sensors in these wireless networks is a key enabling technology. The overwhelming reason is that a sensor’s location must be known for its data to be meaningful. If a system is set up to respond locally to changes in sensor data, then it must know where those changes are occurring. In many cases, location itself is the data that needs to be sensed - localization can be the driving need for wireless sensor networks in many applications.

Software for localization of sensor nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is designed to deal with this automated location estimation of sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network.