RSSI-Based Distributed Self-Localization for Wireless Sensor Networks used in Precision Agriculture

Node localization algorithms that can be easily integrated into deployed wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and which run seamlessly with proprietary lower layer communication protocols running on off-the-shelf modules can help operators of large farms and orchards avoid the difficulty, cost and/or time involved with manual or satellite-based node localization techniques. Even though the state-of-the-art node localization algorithms can achieve low error rates using distributed techniques such as belief propagation (BP), they are not well suited to WSNs deployed for precision agriculture applications with large number of nodes, few number of landmarks and lack real time update capability. The algorithm proposed here is designed for applications such as pest control and irrigation in large farms and orchards where greater power efficiency and scalability are required but location accuracy requirements are less demanding. Our algorithm uses received signal strength indicator (RSSI) values to estimate the distribution of distance between nodes then updates the location probability mass function (pmf) of nodes in a distributed manner. At every time step, the most recently communicated path loss samples and location prior pmf received from neighbouring nodes is sufficient for nodes with unknown location to update their location pmf. This renders the algorithm recursive, hence results in lower computational complexity at each time step. We propose a particular realization of the method in which only one node multicasts at each time step and neighbouring nodes update their location pmf conditioned on all communicated samples over previous time steps. This is highly compatible with realistic WSN deployments, e.g., ZigBee which are based upon the ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) where nodes flood route request (RREQ) and route reply (RREP) packets in the network.