Enhanced DV-Hop Localization Algorithm using RSSI

Localization has been identified as a key and challenging topic in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), especially for the applications requiring the accurate position of the sensed information. DV-Hop is a typical range-free node localization algorithm in WSNs; the localization cost and hardware requirements are not high and localization accuracy of sensor nodes is still low under certain circumstances. Based on the main reasons of the error DV-Hop algorithm, an improved algorithm is proposed in this paper which reduces the location error without requiring additional hardware. The proposed algorithm uses Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) to give the hop count a correction value. In the proposed algorithm the hop count is no longer positive integer number, and can be positive real number. With this new idea, the distance between sensor nodes can be more accurately computed that that of in DV-Hop localization algorithm. Since the distance between sensor nodes estimation is a key issue in localization for WSNs, the proposed algorithm achieves better performance as compared with DV-Hop algorithm. Simulations are performed and the results show that the enhanced DV-Hop algorithm outperforms the DV-Hop algorithm in term of localization accuracy.