Performance of some metaheuristic algorithms for localization in wireless sensor networks

In this paper we propose two novel and computationally efficient metaheuristic algorithms based on tabu search (TS) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) principles for locating the sensor nodes in a distributed wireless sensor network (WSN) environment. The WSN localization problem is formulated as a non‐linear optimization problem with mean squared range error resulting from noisy distance measurement as the objective function. Unlike gradient descent methods, both TS and PSO methods ensure minimization of the objective function without the solution being trapped into local optima. We further implement a refinement phase with error propagation control for improvement of the results. The performance of the proposed algorithms are compared with each other and also against simulated annealing based WSN localization. The effects of range measurement error, anchor node density and uncertainty in the anchor node position on localization performance are also studied through various simulations. The simulation results establish better accuracy, computational efficiency and convergence characteristics for TS and PSO methods. Further, the efficacy of the proposed methods is verified with data collected from an experimental sensor network reported in the literature. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.