Received-Signal-Strength-Based Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In this paper, an overview of recent developments in received-signal-strength (RSS)-based localization in wireless sensor networks is presented. Several important practical issues and their solutions are discussed. To save communication bandwidth and sensor energy, a maximum-likelihood estimator based on quantized data is presented along with its corresponding Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) and optimal quantizer design schemes. For further system resource savings, an iterative sensor selection approach is presented to activate only the most informative sensors, by maximizing the mutual information or minimizing the posterior CRLB at each iteration. For a resource constrained WSN with imperfect wireless channels, channel-aware target localization is described, where the channel model is incorporated into the localization scheme itself, thereby improving performance without increasing communication overhead. Another practical issue involving the presence of malicious sensors called Byzantines is discussed and mitigation schemes are provided. A recent coding-theorybased approach which is both computationally inexpensive and robust to such malicious attacks is also discussed.