EasyLoc: Plug-and-Play RSS-Based Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Localization based on Received Signal Strength (RSS) is a key method for locating objects in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). However, current RSS-based methods are ineffective at both deployment and operation design levels. First, they usually require a labor-intensive pre-deployment profiling operations to map the RSS to either locations or distances. Second often rely on heavy processing operations. These two design problems limit the possibility of implementing such localization techniques on resource-constrained sensor nodes, and also restrict their scalability and use in practice. In this book chapter, we discuss the challenges and limitations of RSS-based localization mechanisms and we propose, EasyLoc, an autonomous and practical RSS-based localization technique that improves on previous approaches in terms of ease of deployment and ease of implementation, while still providing a reasonable accuracy. EasyLoc is a plug-and-play and fully distributed RSS-based localization method that requires zero pre-deployment configuration. The idea consists in exploiting the available distance information between anchors to derive an online and anchor-specific RSS to distance mapping. We show that, in addition to its simplicity, EasyLoc provides, in the best case, a reasonable average distance error of \(2\) m in an indoor environment of 30 \(\mathrm{m}^2\).