On the Localizability of Wireless Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks

PhD Thesis Proposal Defence


Title: "On the Localizability of Wireless Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks"

by

Mr. Zheng YANG


Abstract:

The proliferation of wireless and mobile devices has fostered the demand 
of context-aware applications, in which location is often viewed as one of 
the most significant contexts. For example, wireless sensor networks 
intend to provide information on spatio-temporal characteristics of the 
observed physical world. It is necessary to associate sensed data with 
locations, making data geographically meaningful. Besides, location 
information also supports fundamental network functions, such as topology 
control, routing, clustering, and so on. Hence, localization, a mechanism 
for autonomously discovering and establishing spatial relationships among 
sensor nodes, is of great importance in the design and development of 
wireless ad-hoc and sensor networks.

This proposal mainly addresses the network and node localizability, which 
attract many research efforts in recent years. Network localizability is 
to answer whether or not a network can be localized; i.e., the locations 
of all network nodes can be uniquely determined under the constraints of 
inter-node distances and beacon locations. Nevertheless, we observe from 
working systems that the networks are not always entirely localizable. In 
our research, we propose the concept of node localizability that focuses 
on the location uniqueness of a single node. Indeed, network 
localizability is a special case of node localizability in which all nodes 
are localizable. Applying rigidity theory, we study the conditions of a 
node being localizable and achieve so far the best result of identifying 
localizable nodes. For the first time, it is possible to analyze how many 
nodes one can expected to locate in sparsely or moderately connected 
networks.


Date:  			Tuesday, 30 March 2010

Time:           	10:00am - 12:00noon

Venue:          	Room 3494
 			lifts 25/26

Committee Members:      Dr. Yunhao Liu (Supervisor)
 			Dr. Ke Yi (Chairperson)
 			Dr. Lei Chen
 			Prof. Lionel Ni


**** ALL are Welcome ****