Order-based localization scheme in ad hoc sensor networks

Most monitoring or tracking applications require the localization information in wireless sensor network. The DV-Hop provides a basic scheme to retrieve the localization without GPS information. DV-Hop scheme only uses the localizations of the reference nodes and the hop-count, so the fundamental estimation may cause the larger error than range-based schemes. The proposed scheme uses the neighbor information to improve the accuracy in the distance estimation. A node finds the orders of its neighbors, and the orders means how close of them. The proposed analysis model reveals the probability distribution of the distance with different orders. According to the analysis model, a node retrieves the distance, called order distance, to provide the approximate location. The simulation results show our scheme outperforms than the DV-Hop in the location accuracy. For example, the average error distance is 1.09 in our scheme and 1.4 in DV-Hop with the average node density 9.42.