Acoustic self-localization in a distributed sensor network

The purpose of this paper is to present a technique for determining the coordinate locations of nodes in a distributed sensor network. This technique is based on the time difference of arrival (TDOA) of acoustic signals. In this scheme, several sound sources of known locations transmit while each node in the sensor network records the wave front time-of-arrival. Data from the nodes are transmitted to a central processor and the nonlinear TDOA equations are solved. Computational simulation results are presented in order to quantify the solution behavior and its sensitivity to likely error sources. Results based on experimentally collected data are also presented in order to demonstrate the potential for this approach in solving the self-localization problem.