Path Planning of a Mobile Beacon for Localization in Underwater Sensor Networks

In underwater sensor networks, localization is one of the most important issues because sensor nodes are considerably difficult to be deployed at determined locations. Localization schemes using a mobile beacon have fine-grained localization accuracy because one mobile beacon can replace a lot of static beacons. In localization with a mobile beacon, the movement of a mobile beacon determines the deployment of the beacons used for localization and the deployment influences the localization accuracy. To improve the localization accuracy for localization with a mobile beacon, the study on the path of a mobile beacon is necessary. In this paper, we propose a static path to improve the localization accuracy by considering the path of a mobile beacon and the deployment of the beacons. Simulation results show that the determined static path provides higher localization accuracy than a random path and other static paths.