New Distributed Positioning Algorithm Based on Centroid of Circular Belt for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents a new distributed positioning algorithm for unknown nodes in a wireless sensor network.The algorithm is based exclusively on connectivity.First,assuming that the positions of the anchor nodes are already known,a circular belt containing an unknown node is obtained using information about the anchor nodes that are in radio range of the unknown node,based on the geometric relationships and communication constraints among the unknown node and the anchor nodes.Then,the centroid of the circular belt is taken to be the estimated position of the unknown node.Since the algorithm is very simple and since the only communication needed is between the anchor nodes and the unknown node,the communication and computational loads are very small.Furthermore,the algorithm is robust because neither the failure of old unknown nodes nor the addition of new unknown nodes influences the positioning of unknown nodes to be located.A theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the algorithm does not produce any cumulative error and is insensitive to range error,and that a change in the number of sensor nodes does not affect the communication or computational load.These features make this algorithm suitable for all sizes of low-power wireless sensor networks.