A Distance Boundary with Virtual Nodes for the Weighted Centroid Localization Algorithm†

In wireless sensor networks, accurate location information is important for precise tracking of targets. In order to satisfy hardware installation cost and localization accuracy requirements, a weighted centroid localization (WCL) algorithm, which is considered a promising localization algorithm, was introduced. In our previous research, we proposed a test node-based WCL algorithm using a distance boundary to improve the localization accuracy in the corner and side areas. The proposed algorithm estimates the target location by averaging the test node locations that exactly match with the number of anchor nodes in the distribution map. However, since the received signal strength has large variability in real channel conditions, the number of anchor nodes is not exactly matched and the localization accuracy may deteriorate. Thus, we propose an intersection threshold to compensate for the localization accuracy in this paper. The simulation results show that the proposed test node-based WCL algorithm provides higher-precision location information than the conventional WCL algorithm in entire areas, with a reduced number of physical anchor nodes. Moreover, we show that the localization accuracy is improved by using the intersection threshold when considering small-scale fading channel conditions.