An area localization scheme for large wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor network is a promising technique for many applications. However, new technique also introduces new problems. To get to know the locations of sensors is one challenging problem referred to as the localization problem. For large wireless sensor networks, to identify the exact locations for every sensor is not feasible and the cost may be very high. Furthermore coarse accuracy is usually sufficient for many applications. In this paper, we propose an area localization scheme (ALS) for large wireless sensor networks. This scheme estimates the position of a sensor within a certain area rather than finds the exact coordinates. In ALS, most of the complicated calculations are done by the powerful sinks, while the sensors do not have to make a lot of communications and calculations themselves, which help to save energy and extend the life time of the network. Moreover, the granularity of the areas estimated may be easily adjusted by changing the system parameters, which makes this scheme flexible.