Localization algorithm for wireless sensor networks

In recent years, many localization algorithms are proposed for wireless sensor networks because that is crucial to identifying the accurate positions of sensor nodes. This study proposes an analytic localization algorithm by utilizing radical centers. Assume that a target node can measure its distances to four or more anchor nodes. By picking four distance measurements to four anchor nodes, a radical center is computed and treated as the target node location. To further improve and fuse these estimations, effective filtering mechanisms are then proposed to filter out the improper estimations. Afterwards, the remaining radical centers are averaged, and the solution is the final estimation of the target node location. The location errors of the proposed method and the conventional Minimum Mean Square Error method (MMSE) are analytically compared. Extensive computer simulations were carried out and the results verify the advantage of the proposed location algorithm over the MMSE approach.