Energy-Accuracy Trade-off in Wireless Sensor Network Localization

In Wireless Sensor Networks WSN, research on localization is very common. Localization is a process of achieving the location information using nodes which already have location information. WSN's generally have limited nodes with given location information or a capability of getting their locations using Global Positioning System GPS. Therefore, it is important that wireless nodes have capability to localize. In this work the authors use Time of Flight TOF ranging technique to measure distances between nodes. These distance measurements are then used by trilateration/multi-lateration techniques which require distance measurements between three or more nodes to estimate location. Focus is to a find a trade-off between energy consumption and the location accuracy. For experiments we use SIDnet-SWANS simulator to two different WSN topologies. Experimental results show that accuracy achieved is relatively better without significantly draining the batteries. The results show the trade-off between accuracy and energy, which can be efficiently used by different applications.