A distributed algorithm for localization error detection-correction, use in in-network faulty reading detection: Applicability in long-thin wireless sensor networks

In near future, wireless sensors networks (WSN) are expected to be deployed for a vast variety of applications. For many of these applications, sensed data individually have no meaning without proper knowledge of position where the data was sensed. Although there have been proposed algorithms for localization, many of them fall short with respect to complexity, cost, security and accuracy. Some issues that still hinder the efficiency of available localization techniques are multi-path propagation, security attack (internal and external attack by faulty or malicious nodes), and sometimes specific network topologies. For example, the Long-Thin (LT) topology of WSN is highly prone to localization error due to its special distribution pattern. In many real world WSN applications, the localization is also needed to be Global Positioning Systems (GPS) free. Apart from efficient localization, another important operation in WSN application is the need to have in-network detection of faulty sensor readings, without compromising detection of important events. Looking at these critically important operations of WSN, our first contribution is proposing a self-organized distributed GPS free localization error detection and correction algorithm. Our next contribution is utilizing reliability gained in the proposed localization to construct an improved algorithm for in-network detection of faulty readings. We have also proposed a fault tolerant structure for Long-Thin (LT) WSN topology, that can well utilize both of the proposed algorithms.