A Beacon Selection Algorithm for Bounded Error Location Estimation in Ad Hoc Networks

We consider the class of ad hoc networks, where a small percentage of the nodes are assumed to know their locations a priori and are denoted as reference nodes. Starting from the reference nodes, location information of other nodes are estimated in a hop by hop fashion. Beacon nodes are defined to be nodes that already have a location information (including the reference nodes). Using a two-dimensional cartesian coordinate system, we show that given a maximum of plusmnepsi error in the location of each of the beacon nodes and a maximum error of plusmndelta in each of the measured ranges along either axes, the location of a node can be computed within an error bound of plusmn[3epsi(l+radic2)+2delta] to plusmn(3epsi+2delta) along one axis and within plusmn2epsi(l+radic2)+3delta] to plusmn(3epsi+2delta)) along its orthogonal axis, by using the beacon selection algorithm proposed in this paper