A Localization Error Estimation Method Based on Maximum Likelihood for Wireless Sensor Networks

A composed localization error estimation method is presented for the application in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) which employs maximum likelihood (ML) to locate. Two statistic indexes are given in this method to characterize the whole localization performance of WSN in error aspect. The number of WSN nodes can be determined before deploying to achieve the necessary localization accuracy. Through mathematic analysis, the expressions of mathematical expectation and standard deviation of a WSN are acquired. Besides, based on the expressions, the two indexes are calculated through Monte Carlo simulation. An application applying this method demonstrates the procedure of determining the optimum numbers of unknown nodes (who doesn´t know their positions) and anchor nodes (who know their positions).