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A survey on sensor localization

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Abstract

Localization is one of the fundamental problems in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), since locations of the sensor nodes are critical to both network operations and most application level tasks. Although the GPS based localization schemes can be used to determine node locations within a few meters, the cost of GPS devices and non-availability of GPS signals in confined environments prevent their use in large scale sensor networks. There exists an extensive body of research that aims at obtaining locations as well as spatial relations of nodes in WSNs without requiring specialized hardware and/or employing only a limited number of anchors that are aware of their own locations. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on sensor localization in WSNs covering motivations, problem formulations, solution approaches and performance summary. Future research issues will also be discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Research in Wireless Mobility and Networking (CReWMaN), Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, 76019, USA

    Jing Wang & Sajal K. Das

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, 208016

    R. K. Ghosh

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  1. Jing Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jing Wang.

Additional information

This work was partly supported by the National Science Foundation (No.CNS-0721951, IIS-0326505), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) (No.FA9550-08-1-0260), the Texas Advanced Research Program (ARP) (No.14-748779), the Research I Foundation grant of IIT-Kanpur, and Department of Science and Technology, Government of India under Indo-Trento Program for Advanced Research.

Jing WANG joined the University of Texas at Arlington in 2006 and is currently pursuing Ph.D. degree in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of UTA. She obtained her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China, in 1998 and 2001 respectively. Her research interests are wireless sensor networks and pervasive computing.

R. K. GHOSH received his Ph.D. from IIT Kharagpur in 1985, and joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur as faculty member immediately afterwards. Currently he holds the position of a full professor. His current research interests are in sensor network (deployment, localization, and energy aware routing), mobile computing, grid computing and distributed systems. Dr. Ghosh has published extensively in journals and conference proceedings in the areas of wireless networks, mobile computing, parallel/distributed processing, graph theory and interconnection networks. He has Co-authored one book and edited a few conference proceedings. He has held visiting positions in a few reputed institutes in India and abroad. Dr. Ghosh has directed a number of research projects funded by both public and private agencies in India. He is professionally quite active with international research collaborations, being a member of technical committees of several reputed international conferences in the area of wireless and sensor networks, and also a regular reviewers for many technical journals in the areas of mobile computing and wireless networks.

Sajal K. DAS is a university distinguished scholar professor of Computer Science and Engineering and the Founding Director of the Center for Research in Wireless Mobility and Networking (CReWMaN) at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). He is currently a program director at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Division of Computer Networks and Systems. He is also an E.T.S. Walton professor of Science Foundation of Ireland; a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kanpur and IIT Guwahati; an honorary professor of Fudan University in Shanghai and international advisory professor of Beijing Jiaotong University, China; and a visiting scientist at the Institute of Infocomm Research (I2R), Singapore.

His current research interests include wireless and sensor networks, mobile and pervasive computing, smart environments and smart heath care, pervasive security, resource and mobility management in wireless networks, mobile grid computing, biological networking, applied graph theory and game theory. He has published over 400 papers and over 35 invited book chapters in these areas. He holds five US patents in wireless networks and mobile Internet, and coauthored the books “Smart Environments: Technology, Protocols, and Applications” (Wiley, 2005) and “Mobile Agents in Distributed Computing and Networking” (Wiley, 2009). Dr. Das is a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award (2009) for pioneering contributions to sensor networks, IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Engineering Educator Award (2009), IEEE Engineer of the Year Award (2007); and seven Best Paper Awards including those at EWSN’08, IEEE PerCom’06, and ACM MobiCom’99. At UTA, he is a recipient of the Lockheed Martin Teaching Excellence Award (2009), UTA Academy of Distinguished Scholars Award (2006), University Award for Distinguished Record of Research (2005), College of Engineering Research Excellence Award (2003), and Outstanding Faculty Research Award in Computer Science (2001 and 2003).

Dr. Das serves as the Founding Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC) journal, and also as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ACM/Springer Wireless Networks, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, and Journal of Peer-to-Peer Networking. He is the founder of IEEE WoWMoM symposium and co-founder of IEEE PerCom conference. He has served as General and Technical Program Chair as well as TPC member of numerous IEEE and ACM conferences. He is a senior member of the IEEE.

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Wang, J., Ghosh, R.K. & Das, S.K. A survey on sensor localization. J. Control Theory Appl. 8, 2–11 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11768-010-9187-7

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