Toward Accurate Mobile Sensor Network Localization in Noisy Environments

The node localization problem in mobile sensor networks has received significant attention. Recently, particle filters adapted from robotics have produced good localization accuracies in conventional settings. In spite of these successes, state-of-the-art solutions suffer significantly when used in challenging indoor and mobile environments characterized by a high degree of radio signal irregularity. New solutions are needed to address these challenges. We propose a fuzzy logic-based approach for mobile node localization in challenging environments. Localization is formulated as a fuzzy multilateration problem. For sparse networks with few available anchors, we propose a fuzzy grid-prediction scheme. The fuzzy logic-based localization scheme is implemented in a simulator and compared to state-of-the-art solutions. Extensive simulation results demonstrate improvements in the localization accuracy from 20 to 40 percent when the radio irregularity is high. A hardware implementation running on Epic motes and transported by iRobot mobile hosts confirms simulation results and extends them to the real world.