EARP: Extended Area Multihop Node Localization Algorithm for Anisotropic Wireless Sensor Networks

Localization is one of the essential problems in the Internet of Things (IoT) and other wireless sensor applications. Most traditional range-free localization algorithms ignore the anisotropy factors, which are frequently observed in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and result in low positioning precision. To mitigate the impact of anisotropy on localization, this paper proposes an extended area multihop node localization method. The proposed method classifies and discusses the boundaries of the concave area within the communication range of the node and then uses the maximum split communication distance of the node to identify and mark the boundary of the concave area. When the shortest communication path between the nodes is affected by the concave area, the boundary of the concave area is expanded to obtain the new shortest communication path, and the node distance is obtained by comparing the changes in the communication path. After a large number of simulation tests, it is shown that the calculation accuracy of this scheme is better than that of similar modern mainstream localization algorithms.