International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE) Vol.2, No.4, August 2012, pp. 452~455 ISSN: 2088-8708  452 Journal homepage: http://iaesjournal.com/online/index.php/IJECE Fundamental Metrics for Wireless Sensor Networks localization Javad Rezazadeh, Marjan Moradi, Abdul Samad Ismail Department of Computer Systems and Communication, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia UTM, 81310, Johor, Malaysia e-mail: {rezazadeh, Marjan}@live.utm.my , abdsamad@utm.my Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Jan 31, 2012 Revised Jul 17, 2012 Accepted Jul 26, 2012 During the last decade, Localization in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a broad topic that has received considerable attention from the research community. The approaches suggested to estimate location are implemented with different concepts, functionalities, scopes and technologies. This paper introduces a methodological approach to the evaluation of localization algorithms and contains a discussion of evaluation criteria and performance metrics followed by statistical/ empirical simulation models and metrics that affect the performance of the algorithms and hence their assessment. The major contribution of this paper is to analyze and identify relevant metrics to compare different approaches on the evaluation of localization schemes. Keyword: Evaluation Localization Metrics Wireless Sensor Networks Copyright © 201x Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved. Corresponding Author: Javad Rezazadeh, Department of Computer Systems and Communication, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, UTM, 81310, Johor, Malaysia. Email: rezazadeh@live.utm.my 1. INTRODUCTION A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is formed by hundreds of small, low-cost nodes which have limitations in memory, energy, and processing capacity [1]. In this type of networks, one of the main problems is to locate each node. The vision of many researchers is to create smart environments, controlled through planned or ad-hoc deployment of a potentially large set of sensor nodes, each with transceivers for wireless, short-range communication, capable of detecting environment conditions such as temperature, movement, light, acoustic events or the presence of certain objects. WSN will enable fine-grained observation and control of the physical world. The futuristic scenario in sensor networks appears in large numbers of unattended autonomous nodes which operate in a dynamic environment. This kind of sensor will be able to organize itself. It will be aware of its physical position. The sensor nodes will carry out dynamic tasks in a distributed form, very frequently confronting change in the topology network and failures in the network nodes due to the lack of power, physical damage or environmental interferences. These nodes will report environment events like temperature, pressure, humidity, vehicular movement, noise levels, lighting conditions, the presence or absence of certain kinds of objects, acoustic events, and mechanical stress levels on attached objects, and so on. We can say that localization will act as a bridge between the virtual and physical world [2]. Evaluating the relative performance of localization algorithms is important for researchers, either when validating a new algorithm against the previous state of the art, or when choosing existing algorithms which best fit the requirements of a given WSN application. However, there is a lack of unification in the WSN field in terms of localization algorithm evaluation and comparison. In addition, no standard methodology exists to take an algorithm through modeling, simulation and emulation stages, and into real deployment. As a result it can be hard to quantify exactly how and under what circumstances one algorithm is better than another. Moreover, deciding