RELMA: A Range Free Localization Approach Using Mobile Anchor Node for Wireless Sensor Networks

Efficient sensor localizations are techniques for efficiently identifying sensors' positions for different Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) applications (e.g., environmental monitoring). Most existing localization techniques are designed for low scale sensor networks. Moreover, existing localization approaches are mostly range based that use some powerful nodes equipped with expensive GPS and/or extra hardware (or techniques) for distance estimations. On the other hand, most researchers focus only on the energy efficiency of sensor networks when designing localization method though 1) cost, 2) accuracy, and 3) scalability should also be considered as major design factors. In this paper, we propose Range-free Energy efficient, Localization technique using Mobile Anchor (RELMA) for large scale WSNs that improves accuracy and energy efficiency by reducing the number of anchor nodes. Simulation results demonstrate these properties where RELMA Outperforms NBLS - an existing localization approach [10] in terms of localization accuracy and energy efficiency. Moreover, rigid statistical analysis is used to validate these results.