International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) volume 4 Issue 8 August 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page 2513

Pin Point Localization Technique in Commercial Areas Using
Wireless Sensor Network
Nitika Sharma
#1
, Manik Gupta
*2

#
Student & Computer Science & Chitkara University
Baddi, India


Abstract Wireless Sensor Networks (WISENETs) support
variety of collaborative applications such as monitoring, tracking
and surveillance. Different applications demands different
granularity of location information. Thus, localization is really
become an important challenge in wireless sensor networks.
Although, many localization techniques [2, 3, 4, 5, 11, 10] have
been developed, but all of them have certain limitations like size,
cost, energy efficiency, power constraints and extra hardware
requirement.
In this paper, we propose a Pin Point Localization Technique
using virtual coordinate system to solve the problem of
localization in wireless sensor network. This technique provides
accurate position of an object without any cost or extra hardware
requirement. Thus, the technique is energy efficient and more
successful in indoor places where techniques like GPS are failed
to determine the exact location.
Keywords Pin Point Localization Technique (PPLT), Wireless
Sensor Network (WISENET), Sensor Nodes (SNs), Localization,
Virtual Coordinate System (VCS), Global Positioning System
(GPS).

I. INTRODUCTION
During couple of years, wireless sensor network plays a vital
role in the research area. These networks have an extremely
crucial role in many pervasive technologies because of their
sensing and processing preset functionalities. Wireless Senor
Network (WISENET) deals with various aspects such as
security, mobility, routing, energy efficiency and localization.
These networks are tremendously being used to perform
various monitoring tasks such as battlefield surveillance,
target tracking, environment monitoring, search, rescue and
perimeter security etc. Many such tasks require location
information of the Sensor Nodes (SN). Thus, node localization
has become inherently one of the major challenges over recent
years.
Localization is a technique used to determine the exact
physical location of the object in a geographic map.
Localization has primarily several advantages; location
awareness facilitates numerous application services, such as
location directory services that provide doctors the
information of nearby medical equipment and personnel in
smart hospitals. Moreover in many military applications,
where continuous surveillance is difficult to perform that
makes the network suffers from various attacks, localization
can help to develop various defense and detection algorithms
which protect the networks from various malicious attacks.
Although WISENET deployment is static most of the time but
there are many applications that requires mobility of nodes.
Mobility enables sensor nodes to target and track moving
phenomenon such as earth bound vehicles, chemical clouds
etc. [1]. Mobility plays a vital role in the execution of
application. Since sensor nodes are deployed dynamically in a
hostile area without any fixed infrastructure or may change
their position during run-time, thus it becomes difficult to
perform continuous surveillance whereas in case of static
WISENET once the node positions are determined they are
unlikely to change, thus no such problem occurs. Thus
localization has gained much attention in recent years and is
considered to be one of the fundamental challenges in mobile
wireless sensor networks also.
Sometimes pin point location information is required, rather
than a general idea about the event occurrence. There are
applications such as geographic routing which only require
relative position of node while applications like target tracking,
security and military monitoring require physical location of
nodes as accurately as possible.. Moreover many places we
go and stay are indoors and even a single building can contain
multiple places especially in dense urban environment. Such
applications require pin point information about the location.
Thus, different applications demands different granularity of
node information.
In this paper, we propose PPLT i.e. Pin Point Localization
Technique using GPS (Global Positioning System) and VCS
(Virtual Coordinate System) in WISENET. This technique
helps to determine the exact physical location of the object
based on different granularity of information. The technique
requires involvement of sensor nodes and establishment of
network within the nodes.
Rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
summarizes system related work done. In section 3, system
model and PPLT implementation is introduced. Section 4
describes the performance evolution and section 5 summarizes
conclusion and future work.

II. WORK SO FAR
Since there are many techniques that provide location
awareness categorized as Range-based techniques as well as
Range-free techniques. Range-based approaches includes
Triangulation [2], Time of Arrival [3], Received Difference of
Arrival [5].These techniques uses distance estimation or angle
estimation methods to calculate node position.
International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) volume X Issue YMonth 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page 2514


Triangulation: This method uses the lateration or angulation
for the determination of location of a sensor node. In this
method, some nodes are called Anchor nodes and it is
assumed that their location is known to them. These nodes
broadcast their location information to all their neighboring
nodes. Lateration is the calculation of position information of
an object by measuring its distance from multiple reference
points which is given by:
d = /
The distance estimation can be based on time of arrival (TOA)
or relative signal strength (RSSI), as shown in fig.
1.Angulation approach uses the Angle-of-Arrival (AOA)
which estimates the angle at which signals are received to find
the relative location of the sensor node.


Fig. 1 Positioning Method for Measurement in Triangulation Technique

Time Difference of Arrival: TDOA method provides more
accuracy under line of sight conditions. TDOA transmits the
Ultrasound and Radio signals at the same time to obtain the
range information through which distance between node and
source is calculated. This method can be applied to many
different signals such as RF, Ultrasound, acoustic etc.

Received Signal strength Indicator (RSSI): RSSI measures the
power of signals at the receiver and based on the known
transmit power; the effective propagation loss can be
calculated [4]. By using theoretical or empirical model signal
strength can be translated into distance. RSSI is basically a
measurement of the power present in a received radio signal.

Time of Arrival (TOA): TOA makes use of signal propagation
time to obtain range information. A system needs to be
synchronous to use TOA for range estimation .It demands
high clock resolution to measure the accurate position. TOA
can be measured using different signaling techniques such as
Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum or Ultra wide Band
measurements. TOA method can be applied to many different
signals such as RF, infrared and ultrasound etc.GPS uses the
TOA technique to calculate the range information. Fig. 2
shows the positioning technique for the measurement in TOA.

Angle-Of-Arrival (AOA): Angle-Of-Arrival is defined as the
angle between the propagation direction of an incident wave
and some reference directions known as orientation [11].
AOA estimates the angle at which the signals are received and
use geometric relationships to find the relative positions of
sensor nodes, as shown in fig. 3.

Fig. 2 Positioning Method for Measurement in Time of Arrival

Range Free Localization: Range-free approaches are further
categorized into local techniques as well as hop count
techniques. Local techniques rely on the high density of seeds
whereas hop count techniques rely on flooding a network.
This approach is used to obtain a coarse-grained location
estimate by simply figuring out what beacons are nearby [6, 7].


Fig 3 Positioning method for measurement in Angle of Arrival

The all above mentioned techniques suffers from the
following problems:
- Techniques that depend on measuring ranging information
from signal strength [4], time difference of arrival [5], or
angle of arrival [11] are special hardware dependence. These
techniques require hardware that is typically not available on
sensor nodes and thus adding the required hardware increase
the cost and size of nodes.
- Particular network topology Requirements: Most techniques
require seed nodes to be numerous and evenly distributed in
order to cover the whole network. But prior deployment of
seeds is not possible in many sensor network applications.
Hop count based techniques [8, 9] avoid the need for a large
number of seeds but still require uniform node distribution.
Localization can also be achieved through techniques such as
manual configuration and Global Positioning System (GPS)
[10] technique. But both these techniques have certain
limitations. For example manual configuration is not possible
in case of large scale networks whereas GPS technique
demands high energy which lasts the battery of wireless
devices more quickly than other applications so charging of
such devices is required often. Moreover the GPS technique is
more successful in wide areas like grounds; roads etc. but fails
its importance in case of indoor environments. Moreover
Sensor Nodes equipped with GPS receivers makes it costly in
terms of both hardware and power consumption.
Pin Point Localization Technique (PPLT) as proposed in this
paper will help us to rescue from these problems. The
2
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X
Z
R2
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R3
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International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) volume X Issue YMonth 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page 2515

technique overcomes the disadvantages of GPS where we will
be able to develop an energy efficient way with more accurate
position. This technique includes no extra hardware
requirements and thus making the system size effective,
energy efficient and cost efficient.
III.
IV. SYSTEM MODEL
Localization i.e. to physically locate the objects has become a
major problem in wireless sensor network. Although many
techniques have been developed to solve this problem of
localization but all of them have some pros and cons. Lets
take an example of a rectangular shaped multistory building,
as shown in fig. 4where, we want to locate multiple persons
placed at the same corner of building on different floors, there
is no such technique that can determine the exact physical
location of an object. Techniques so far available are
successful in finding best location on x-scale, however finds
limitation on y-scale. Thus persons standing at the same
corner either at floor 1 or 2 or 3 will reflect the same
aggregate position rather than their actual position. Moreover
in commercial buildings like a shopping complex as shown in
fig. 5where, we have multiple floors, finding exact location of
an object is a high demand problem. The techniques
developed so far only gives the aggregate position of an object
and not the actual one.

The PPLT technique provides exact information about the
location of an object as the scenario mentioned above. This
technique uses the combination of GPS and local coordinate
system to provide location awareness. This method is a cost
effective, energy efficient and size effective solution for the
problem of localization. This method is advantageous in many
indoor applications where techniques like GPS are failed to
provide accurate position with more energy efficiency.

V. PPLT RESULT ANALYSIS AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
PPLT have been simulated for energy consumed by the SNs
with the change in distance values of the mobile nodes, which
may be a person or any object moving inside the building.
Here, we use a simplified model for PPTL technique as shown
in fig. 6, where we have a multistory building having ten
floors.


Fig. 4 Several persons standing at same x- location on multiple floors.


Fig. 5 Sample Architecture of a Shopping Complex


We fixed the location of GPS on the top of the building and
there are sink nodes on every floor with fixed location that
communicate with GPS directly. We have assumed that the user
is randomly moving on top floor. Sink node then radiates energy
towards the user. For realistic, our simulation uses the first order
radio model as the communication model. Equation (1) and (2)
represent the energy dissipation between the sink node and
mobile node or GPS node and mobile node, when a SN sends or
receives an l -bit message.

Shop #01
Shop #02
Cinema Hall
Lobby
Store Room Restaurant
7
th
Floor
6
th
Floor
5
th
Floor
4
th
Floor
3
rd
Floor
2
nd
Floor
1
st
Floor
International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) volume X Issue YMonth 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page 2516

elec recieve
E l E = (1)

> +
s +
=
mp
E
fs
E
ifd d
mp
E
elec
E l
mp
E
fs
E
ifd d
fs
E
elec
E l
trans
E
),
4
(
),
2
(
(2)

Fig. 6 Simulated Arrangement of a Commercial Building for PPLT

The mobile node when receives the transmitted energy, sink
node calculates the distance of itself upto the mobile node and
so, the coordinates of user are known. Similarly, GPS radiates
energy towards the user, on receiving the transmitted energy
the distance is calculated. In our simulated model, we assume
the message size being 64 bytes, free space attenuation
coefficient (E
fs
) being 10 pJ/bit/m
2
, multipath attenuation
coefficient (E
mp
) being 0.0013 pJ/bit/m4, electronic power
(E
elec
) being 50 nJ/bit, number of sink nodes being 10- one for
each floor, floor area be 100 m
2
.
Fig. 7 and fig. 8 shows the comparison of energy consumed
while localizing an object through Sink Nodes and GPS
respectively. Fig. 7 considers the movement of a person or
object on 10
th
floor where the sink node is placed at 0
th

position on x-axis, thus representing least energy at 0
th

position i.e. when the person is very close to the sink node. As
the person proceeds to the other corner of the building and the
distance increases then proportionally the transmission energy
also increases; however the receiving energy remains almost
constant.

Fig. 7 Energy consumption while calculating energy through sink node

Fig. 8 Energy consumption while calculating distance using GPS

In similar to fig. 7, fig. 8 considers the movement of a person
or object on 10th floor where the GPS node; representing the
aggregate position of the building under observation from the
Base Station end, is placed at certain average position on x-
axis, thus representing least energy at the middle position of
the building i.e. when the person is in contact with least
distance from the GPS node. As the person proceeds to the
other corners of the building i.e. the distance increases then
proportionally the transmission energy also increases;
however the receiving energy remains almost constant. In
similar to fig. 7, fig. 8 considers the movement of a person or
object on 10
th
floor where the GPS node; representing the
1
st
Floor
2
nd
Floor
3
rd
Floor
4
th
Floor
5
th
Floor
6
th
Floor
7
th
Floor
8
th
Floor
9
th
Floor
10
th
Floo
Mobile
SN GPS
Sink
Node
International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) volume X Issue YMonth 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page 2517

aggregate position of the building under observation from the
Base Station end, is placed at certain average position on x-
axis, thus representing least energy at the middle position of
the building i.e. when the person is in contact with least
distance from the GPS node. As the person proceeds to the
other corners of the building i.e. the distance increases then
proportionally the transmission energy also increases;
however the receiving energy remains almost constant.
It is observed that localization using sink nodes as shown in
fig. 7 is more energy efficient technique as compared to
localizing an object using GPS technique; influencing the
need of hierarchical path for message transfer. Thus, PPLT
provides more accurate solution for localization using sink
nodes.
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
Different application demands different granularity of the
location information. In this paper, we presented PPLT for
localization especially for indoor applications in WISENET. It
uses GPS and local coordinate system to provide exact
location of the object. This technique provide accurate and
energy efficient solution for localization in commercial areas
where all other approaches developed so far are unable to
provide energy efficient solution. In future, researchers can
consider increase in pace of mobile nodes, mobility of sink
nodes and cluster formation of various buildings and energy
efficient mechanism of PPLT for irregular shaped buildings.

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