New path planning model for mobile anchor-assisted localization in wireless sensor networks

As event detection is one of the main purposes of using wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the nodes location is essential to determine the location of that event when it occurs. Many localization models have been proposed in the literature. One of the solutions is to deploy a set of location-aware nodes, called anchors, to exchange information with the other nodes in order to help estimate their own location. Another promising proposal involves replacing these sets of anchors with only one mobile anchor. While this proposal seems to provide favorable results, it brings new challenges. The main challenge is to find an optimal path for the mobile anchor to follow while taking into account the need to provide highly accurate data and more localizable nodes in less time and with less energy. In this paper, we introduced a new static path planning model for mobile anchor-assisted localization in WSNs. Our proposed model guarantees that all nodes are able to receive the localization information, thus, estimate their own location with higher localization accuracy in comparison to similar static models. Moreover, this model overcomes the problem of collinearity and takes into account the metrics of precision and energy consumption as well as accuracy, localization ratio and the path length of the mobile anchor.