A particle swarm optimization based multilateration algorithm for UWB sensor network

In this paper, a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based multilateration algorithm is presented for a UWB communications based sensor network. The particle swarm uses simple operators and is a bottom-up approach for identifying the location in a 2D space. Hence the PSO uses less energy. For comparison we present two alternative approaches traditionally used for this problem. The first one is (a) traditional iterative least square algorithm, (b) a one step simple least square solution. With respect to least squares, PSO results in slightly less error than the traditional iterative least square approach making. However, it is computationally inexpensive making it a good choice for a wireless network of small devices. The PSO multilateration algorithm really improves localization error over the one step least square algorithm. The new algorithm can replace the traditional algorithm in different applications.