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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 ****