Self-Configuring Localization Systems: Design and Experimental Evaluation
Nirupama Bulusu, John Heidemann, Deborah Estrin, and Tommy Tran
USC/Information Sciences Institute
Abstract
Embedded networked sensors--those that coordinate amongst themselves
to achieve a sensing task--promise to revolutionize the way we live,
work and interact with the physical environment. Fundamental to such
coordination is localization, or the ability to establish
spatial relationships among such devices. In very large, ad hoc
deployed sensor networks, a localization system based on beacons
(special nodes that are position-aware by virtue of being endowed with
more sophisticated ranging hardware) can be used to localize smaller
devices consistently even in a completely decentralized and scalable
manner. However, in unattended sensor networks, these localization
systems must \emph self-configure, i.e., autonomously adapt to the
dynamics of their environmental setting and the availability of
beacons, instead of relying on extensive pre-configuration or manual
reconfiguration. In this paper, we present the motivation, design,
implementation and experimental evaluation of a self-configuring
localization system based on beacons. We identify density as an
important parameter in determining localization quality, and propose
HEAP and STROBE, two algorithms to enable system self-configuration
based on beacon density. Building on the observation that the quality
of localization saturates at a transition beacon density, these
algorithms (i) automate placement of new beacons at low densities to
significantly improve localization quality or (ii) rotate
functionality amongst redundant beacons at high beacon densities to
significantly increase overall system lifetime. Our performance
results include experimental results from implementation of an
RF-proximity based localization system using nodes with sharply
limited resources (8-bit microprocessor, 8-K ROM, 512 bytes RAM,
limited battery life).
Availability
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Reference
- Bulusu02c
-
Nirupama Bulusu, John Heidemann, Deborah Estrin, and Tommy Tran.
Self-Configuring Localization Systems: Design and Experimental Evaluation.
Technical Report 8, University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Embedded Networked Computing, September, 2002.
Accepted to appear, ACM TOCS.
<http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PAPERS/Bulusu02c.html>.
@techreport{Bulusu02c,
author = "Nirupama Bulusu and John Heidemann and
Deborah Estrin and Tommy Tran",
title = "Self-Configuring Localization Systems: Design
and Experimental Evaluation",
institution = "University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Embedded Networked Computing",
year = "2002",
number = "8",
month = "September",
note = "Accepted to appear, ACM TOCS",
keywords = "localization",
otherurl = "http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~bulusu/papers/Bulusu02c.html",
url = "http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PAPERS/Bulusu02c.html",
pdfurl = "http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PAPERS/Bulusu02c.pdf",
copyrightholder = "{ACM}",
myorganization = "USC/Information Sciences Institute",
}
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