Dead Reckoning Localization Technique for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

Localization in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) not only provides a node with its geographical location but also a basic requirement for other applications such as geographical routing. Although a rich literature is available for localization in static WSN, not enough work is done for mobile WSNs, owing to the complexity due to node mobility. Most of the existing techniques for localization in mobile WSNs uses Monte-Carlo localization (MCL), which is not only time-consuming but also memory intensive. They, consider either the unknown nodes or anchor nodes to be static. In this paper, we propose a technique called Dead Reckoning Localization for mobile WSNs (DRLMSN). In the proposed technique all nodes (unknown nodes as well as anchor nodes) are mobile. Localization in DRLMSN is done at discrete time intervals called checkpoints. Unknown nodes are localized for the first time using three anchor nodes. For their subsequent localizations, only two anchor nodes are used. The proposed technique estimates two possible locations of a node Using Bézout’s theorem. A dead reckoning approach is used to select one of the two estimated locations. We have evaluated DRLMSN through simulation using Castalia simulator, and is compared with a similar technique called RSS-MCL proposed by Wang and Zhu [1].