Experimental Results for and Theoretical Analysis of a Self-Organizing Global Coordinate System for Ad Hoc Sensor Networks

We present an algorithm for achieving robust and reasonably accurate localization in a randomly placed wireless sensor network, without the use of global control, globally-accessible beacon signals, or accurate estimates of inter-sensor distances. We present theoretical analysis, simulation results and recent experimental results. The theoretical analysis shows that there is a critical minimum average neighborhood size of 15 for good accuracy, and simulation results show that position accuracy to within 20% of the local radio range can be achieved, even with upto 10% variation in the radio ranges.