Node Reproduction Based Range-free Localization Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, a node self-localization algorithm based on node reproduction (NR) for wireless sensor network (WSN) is proposed. This method is adapted to WSN that anchor nodes present a uniform distribution in three dimensional sensor spaces. During the localization process, by reproducing a 3D special node, which is called the reproduced node, unknown nodes can calculate their own positions automatically. This NR algorithm is a three dimensional range-free approach which does not need extra hardware requests and the unknown nodes can calculate reproduced node by position information from three-different anchor nodes. Finally the unknown position coordinates are obtained by the position information of above four nodes. This approach has low complexity and the localization process is much simpler in simulation. The localization error can also reach a low level compared with classic DV-Hop and Centroid which can be found in simulation and the NR algorithm needs the least localization time. In extreme situations, localization error and time are improved by 25%, 84% and 84%, 88% compared with Centroid and DV-Hop algorithms respectively.