Localization in mobile wireless sensor networks using drones

Localization is one of the most important aspects of wireless sensor networks. Most of the localization algorithms proposed in the literature, work for static networks. However, the performance of these protocols in the mobile environment still needs to be investigated. Localization in a mobile environment may pose challenges of accuracy and computational complexity due to mobility of the nodes. In this article, we have proposed an algorithm for localization in mobile wireless sensor networks using drones (LMWSND). A drone-based algorithm is proposed to simulate the moving trajectory of the drones. The proposed drone-based algorithm uses the technique of received signal strength between the drone and unknown sensor nodes to find the distance between them. The distance thus obtained is used for localization of the unknown nodes. A new method is used to solve the system of distance equations to restrict the propagation of error. Furthermore, the mathematical analysis of the propagation error in LMWSND proves the superiority of our proposed algorithm in comparison to other algorithms. The results obtained through simulations further strengthen our conclusion that the proposed algorithm reduces the propagation of error. We have also proposed another algorithm to choose the nearby beacon points for better utilization of the network resources and to reduce the computational efforts.