Study on the application of DV-hop localization algorithms to random sensor networks

DV-Hop algorithm is one of the important range-free localization algorithms. The algorithm performs better in isotropic density sensor networks, however, it has larger location errors in randomly distributed networks. According to the localization principle of the DV-Hop algorithm, this paper proposes three improvements including the estimation of average single hop distance, the calculation of distance between unknown nodes and reference nodes and the estimation of node positions. These improvements can be used independently or jointly to replace the corresponding steps in the DV-Hop algorithm. The localization performances are analyzed in theory and with simulations. The results show that the proposed improvements can greatly enhance the localization accuracy of the unknown nodes. In addition, the proposed schemes do not change the localization process of the DV-Hop algorithm, and hence they need no further communication resource and additional hardware requirement.