RLISE: Relative Location with Incomplete Stationary Emitters

Geographic location information of nodes in ad hoc networks is useful for improved routing, lookup services, and location aware applications. This paper proposes a scheme that enables nodes of an adhoc network to discover their geographical location with good accuracy when only a few nodes know a-priori their exact location (e.g., through GPS) and the only additional information available to other nodes is the relative distance from their immediate neighbors (e.g., based on the quality of the signal they receive). The proposed scheme is investigated using simulations to explore its efficiency as a function of the number of nodes that have accurate knowledge of their position (we refer to such nodes as stationary emitters), the density of the network, and the impact of errors in distance measurements on the accuracy of this scheme.