RSSI Based Localization with Mobile Anchor for Wireless Sensor Networks

Localization is one of the key issues of wireless sensor networks. Because of the energy and hardware constraints of sensor nodes, we usually use RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) as a ranging method. In this paper, we proposed an RSSI-based localization algorithm, which takes use of the RSSI values received by sensor node from mobile anchor node to estimate the position of sensor node. We used mobile anchor moving along specific trajectory to locate the unknown nodes, study four different trajectories and analyze the simulation result. Our research indicates that reducing the time interval of transmitting beacons can improve the positional accuracy when using as few anchor nodes as possible. The relative position of anchor’s trajectory and the unknown node has an influence on the location result, and an appropriate trajectory can optimize the localization accuracy.