VBLM: High-Accuracy Localization Method with Verification Mechanism for Unstable-Signal Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks have received a lot of attention in recent years due to their wide spectrum of applications. Localization a technique used in ubiquitous sensor networks. Most localization techniques apply RSSI-based ranging techniques to compute the location of the object in a wireless sensor network. However, a wireless sensor network is a fading-signal environment that has noise, which causes RSSI to become unstable and leads to abrupt distance estimates. In this paper, we propose the VerificationBased Localization Method (VBLM) to alleviate the effect of unstable signals to provide high-accuracy location estimates in wireless sensor environments. VBLM filters noisy signals in the localization process. The sensor node uses a neighboring beacon to help verify the quality of received signal under acceptable communication cost. Noisy signals can thus be removed to decrease localization error. A set of experiments was conducted in an outdoor environment. The experimental results show that VBLM reduces the localization error in unstable signal sensor networks better than is possible with other localization methods.