A Comparative Review of Connectivity-Based Wireless Sensor

Localization Techniques

Charles J. Zinsmeyer and Turgay Korkmaz^*

The University of Texas at San Antonio

San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A.

{fczinsmey, korkmazg}@cs.utsa.edu

Abstract

One of the key problems in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is how to identify the location of

each node. The research community has done considerable work on this localization problem and

developed various techniques ranging from hardware-based ones requiring extra units (e.g., GPS,

directional antennas) to software-based ones requiring only the connectivity information. In this paper,

we present an overview of the key localization techniques and then focus on the range-free or

connectivity based approaches. After the overview, we implement and compare the performance of

connectivity-based techniques using simulations. We show these techniques vary considerably in

their ability to localize a wireless sensor network.

Keywords: Wireless Sensor Network, Localization, Multidimensional Scaling, Force Directed,

Combinatorial Delaunay Complex

*Corresponding author: Dept. of Computer Science, The University of Texas at San Antonio,

One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX 78249, USA, Tel: +1-210-458-7346