A study on 2D and 3D weighted centroid localization algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks

An improved 2D weighted centroid localization algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is proposed. Compared with most previous approaches, the improved algorithm uses a optimized threshold to restrict the number of anchors involved. Simulation results show that our improved weighted centroid localization algorithm increased the positioning accuracy by at least 15% than traditional Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) algorithm. Furthermore, the algorithm is extended from 2D to 3D and comparison with MCL method both in accuracy and in efficiency are carried out as well, showing that 3D-WCL algorithm has a high accuracy about 13% localization average error significantly with little hardware cost, which is suitable for practical application, such as medical surveillance in hospital etc.