Source positioning in a large-scale tiny-sensor network of arbitrary topology

To effectively localise a source node in a dense wireless tiny-sensor network with an arbitrary 2D/3D node distribution, a novel approach suitable to describe the hop progress of source-to-sink path in such a system is proposed. In this approach, the network topology is described as a regular lattice and relates the statistical parameters of the hop count in the source-to-sink propagation path to the fractal properties of a percolating cluster. Based on this approach, a mathematical model is developed to estimate the probability P(r, t) of successful reception of the message by a sink node spaced at distance r from a source in a given time t. The accuracy analysis of the positioning method demonstrates its high performance for the very broad spectrum of values of the occupation probability pocc.