RILL: A RSSI-based Lightweight Positioning Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been widely used in positioning, monitoring, military among many other applications. Positioning algorithm is one of the most important technique in WSNs. However, the positioning accuracy is directly impacted by the distance measurement methods. In order to improve the positioning accuracy, we proposed a novel (Received Signal Strength Indication) RSSI-based Lightweight Positioning algorithm for wireless sensor networks (RILL). In RILL, we use the RSSI to estimate the distance between the mobile nodes and fixed nodes. The mobile node can combine the position information of the fixed nodes with the distance between the fixed nodes and itself to get a square. The center of the square is the position coordinate of these fixed nodes, respectively, and the side length of the square is double the distance. The estimated position of the mobile node is the three square's centroid coincident area or the intersection area extension line. The biggest characteristic of our RILL is that even though the accuracy of RSSI-based distance measurement is not high, RILL can get an optimal estimation result. Furthermore, the algorithm complexity of RILL is much lower when compared to other positioning algorithms. Our experiments show that RILL has a better positioning result compared to centroid positioning and trilateral positioning algorithm.