Fundamental Limitations and State-of-the-art Solutions for Target Node
Localization in WSNs
Abstract
With the advances in new technological trends and the reduction in
prices of sensor nodes, wireless sensor networks
(WSNs) and their applications are proliferating in several areas of our
society such as healthcare, industry, farming, and housing. Accordingly,
in recent years attention on localization has increased significantly
since it is one of the main facets in any WSN. In a nutshell,
localization is the process in which the position of any sensor node is
retrieved by exploiting measurements from and between sensor nodes.
Several techniques of localization have been proposed in the literature
with different localization accuracy, complexity, and hence different
applicability. The localization accuracy is limited by fundamental
limitations, theoretical and practical, that restrict the localization
accuracy regardless of the technique employed in the localization
process. In this paper, we pay special attention to such fundamental
limitations from the theoretical and practical points of view and
provide a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art solutions that
deal with such limitations. Additionally, discussion on the theoretical
and practical limitations together with their recent solutions,
remaining challenges, and perspectives are presented.