AWCL: Adaptive Weighted Centroid Localization as an efficient improvement of coarse grained localization

Abstract

Localization of sensor nodes is one of the key issues in wireless sensor networks. It is a precondition for a variety of scenarios as well as geographic clustering and routing. A simple approach for coarse grained localization is weighted centroid localization (WCL), which, unfortunately, comes with some drawbacks. Therefore, we present the "Adaptive WCL" (AWCL) algorithm that outperforms the linearly weighted WCL in terms of accuracy. Moreover, AWCL achieves similar accuracy as WCL using quadratic weights, but does not rely on complex calculations like quadratic WCL. The adaptive character of AWCL leads to a small localization failure for beacon communication ranges, exceeding the beacon distance.