Range-free 3D node localization in anisotropic wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we propose two computationally efficient ‘range-free’ 3D node localization schemes using the application of hybrid-particle swarm optimization (HPSO) and biogeography based optimization (BBO). It is considered that nodes are deployed with constraints over three layer boundaries, in an anisotropic environment. The anchor nodes are randomly distributed over the top layer only and target nodes distributed over the middle and bottom layers. Radio irregularity factor, i.e., an anisotropic property of propagation media and heterogenous properties of the devices are considered. To overcome the non-linearity between received signal strength (RSS) and distance, edge weights between each target node and neighboring anchor nodes have been considered to compute the location of the target node. These edge weights are modeled using fuzzy logic system (FLS) to reduce the computational complexity. The edge weights are further optimized by HPSO and BBO separately to minimize the location error. Both the proposed applications of the two algorithms are compared with the earlier proposed range-free algorithms in literature, i.e., the simple centroid method and weighted centroid method. The results of our proposed applications of the two algorithms are better as compared to centroid and weighted centroid methods in terms of error and scalability.