A simple method for positioning and tracking in wireless sensor networks

In this paper we develop a simple yet effective heuristic algorithm to estimate the location of a sensor node in wireless sensor networks. Our method utilizes a simple and inexpensive received signal strength (RSS) measurement at a node to maximize the maximum likelihood (ML) function in a localization problem. We show via numerical results that the location estimations obtained from the new method are more accurate compared to those of traditional techniques. The algorithm can also be easily used to track the movement of a node in wireless sensor networks.