Anchor placement design for a decoupled simple trilateration algorithm

Abstract

Localization is one of the main issues in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). By deploying anchor nodes, the sensor node location can be estimated. Generally, three anchor node positions should be fixed and known so that it becomes possible to estimate other sensor nodes by using a trilateration technique. This paper investigated a mobile anchor node for a real-time local positioning system (RT-LPS). The target position could be calculated directly without a limitation of the coverage area, because three anchor nodes have been equipped on the mobile robot. The proposed method involves the design of three anchors at a specific right-angled triangle position to simplify the calculation of position information. A simple equation is proposed for calculating the target position. The measurement distances between the anchor and the target node are collected by using the time-of-arrival (ToA) method. The simulation results are compared in terms of the position error with the equilateral triangle method. © 2019 Yokohama Publishers