Evaluation of algorithms for cooperative localization in wireless sensor networks

In many wireless sensor network (WSN) applications the location of the nodes in the network is required. Localization of nodes is difficult in cases where the use of Global Positioning System is not feasible. Such networks will usually contain a small number of anchors at known locations, but their density is sufficiently low that the other nodes cannot determine their location directly from the anchors. Hence cooperative localization within the network is required. In this paper we evaluate the performance of several cooperative localization algorithms using data collected in field trials and show that a modified version of the DV distance algorithm performs significantly better than the other algorithms considered.