Location Estimation of Sensor Nodes using Harmony Search Algorithm

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consists of thousands of sensor nodes that are deployed randomly for various monitoring and sensing applications. Location estimation of sensor nodes is a key factor in WSN as the sensed information can be useful only when its location is known. The locations of the sensor nodes can be estimated using a process of localization. One of the critical issues in localization is the accuracy of the estimated locations. The accuracy of the localization is affected by the environmental or measurement noise which results in localization error. This demands the minimization of localization error. Thus, the localization problem can to be treated as an optimization problem with an objective of estimating accurate locations of sensor in a minimum amount of time. In this paper, location of randomly deployed sensor nodes has been estimated using a few special nodes called as anchor and an optimization algorithm. A population-based meta-heuristic algorithm namely Harmony Search (HS) algorithm has been used to minimize the localization error in the simulated environment of WSN. The results of HS-based localization are compared with results of deterministic trilateration algorithm. The HS algorithm has shown improved location estimation accuracy with the compromise in computing time.