Analysis of Localization Accuracy in Wireless Networks in Presence of Uncertain Beacon Positions

The problem of location estimation and its accuracy in wireless networks with fixed beacons has been studied extensively. However, the problem becomes more challenging when the beacons are non-stationary, or when the location of the beacons is not precisely known. In this paper, we analyze the effect of the uncertain beacon positions on the localization error. First we examine the performance of the conventional localization techniques. Subsequently, we study the effectiveness of a novel technique, which utilizes the topological diversity provided by the various combinations of beacon nodes. Results from our modeling effort show that this approach helps reduce the errors caused by imperfect knowledge of beacon positions. The results also indicate that the use of this approach improves the robustness of location estimation as compared to existing methods.