I-DWRL: Improved Dual Wireless Radio Localization Using Magnetometer

Abstract

In the dual wireless radio localization (DWRL) technique each sensor node is equipped with two ultra-wide band (UWB) radios; the distance between the two radios is a few tens of centimeters. For localization, the DWRL technique must use at least two pre-localized nodes to fully localize an unlocalized node. Moreover, in the DWRL technique it is also not possible for two sensor nodes to properly communicate location information unless each of the four UWB radios of two communicating sensor nodes cannot approach the remaining three radios. In this paper, we propose an improved DWRL (I-DWRL) algorithm along with mounting a magnetometer sensor on one of the UWB radios of all sensor nodes. This addition of a magnetometer helps to improve DWRL algorithm such that only one localized sensor node is required for the localization of an unlocalized sensor node, and localization can also be achieved even when some of the four radios of two nodes are unable to communicate with the remaining three radios. The results show that with the use of a magnetometer a greater number of nodes can be localized with a smaller transmission range, less energy and a shorter period of time. In comparison with the conventional DWRL algorithm, our I-DWRL not only maintains the localization error but also requires around half of semi-localizations, 60% of the time, 70% of the energy and a shorter communication range to fully localize an entire network. Moreover, I-DWRL can even localize more nodes while transmission range is not sufficient for DWRL algorithm.