A Novel Positioning System Based on Coverage Area Pruning in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are commonly applied in environmental monitoring applications. The crucial factor in such applications is to accurately retrieve the location of a monitoring event. Although many technologies have been proposed for target positioning, the devices used in such methods require better computational abilities or special hardware that is unsuitable for sensor networks with limited ability. Therefore, a range-free positioning algorithm, named coverage area pruning positioning system (CAPPS), is proposed in this study. First, the proposed CAPPS approach determines the area that includes the target approximately by using sensor nodes that can detect the target. Next, CAPPS uses sensor nodes that cannot detect the target to prune the area to improve positioning accuracy. The radio coverage variation is evaluated in a practical scenario, and a heuristic mechanism is proposed to reduce false positioning probability. Simulation results show that the size of the positioning area computed by CAPPS is smaller than that computed using distance vector hop, angle of arrival, and received signal strength indicator by approximately 98%, 97%, and 93%, respectively. In the radio variation scenario, the probability of determining an area excluding the target can be reduced from 50%–95% to 10%–30% by applying the proposed centroid point mechanism.