Location in distributed ad-hoc wireless sensor networks

Evolving networks of ad-hoc wireless sensing nodes rely heavily on the ability to establish position information. The algorithms presented herein rely on range measurements between pairs of nodes and the a priori coordinates of sparsely located anchor nodes. Clusters of nodes surrounding anchor nodes cooperatively establish confident position estimates through assumptions, checks, and iterative refinements. Once established, these positions are propagated to more distant nodes, allowing the entire network to create an accurate map of itself. Major obstacles include overcoming inaccuracies in range measurements as great as /spl plusmn/50%, as well as the development of initial guesses for node locations in…