A Study of Localization Mechanisms in Wireless Sensor Networks

A sensor network is composed of a large number of low-cost multifunctional sensor nodes.It can be wildly used for event-monitoring in various fields,such as environment,military,biology and so on.The information of loca- tion is indispensable for events-monitoring.In order to precisely locate the event,sensor nodes have to locate itself firstly.The mechanism of the localization is the most fundamental mechanism in wireless sensor network.This paper firstly classifies the localization mechanisms into two categories:range-based and range-free mechanism of localization, and then introduces and analyses these typical mechanisms in detail.