Communication Area Based Positioning

Abstract

This paper presents an algorithm for positioning sensor network nodes based on the communication areas of the nodes. The nodes can be positioned either using a small number of anchor nodes or a single location aware mobile node which can determine its location dynamically through external means (e.g. an existing infrastructure, such as GPS). The algorithm does not use any distance or bearing estimations between nodes, but instead the communication areas of anchor nodes are used to determine the position of nodes. The paper presents an overview of the algorithm explaining the main principles of the algorithm. A semi-formal description of the algorithm is given, followed by the description of the simulations. The simulations involved randomly and relatively sparsely distributed nodes in a square area with randomly and more sparsely distributed anchor nodes in the same area. In addition to simulations some tests in a test environment were conducted positioning MICA2 motes and RF ID tags by a mobile location aware platform. The test setup is described and the test results are presented. The paper is concluded by some finalizing remarks and ideas for further research