Two-hop distance estimation in wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, the accurate estimation of distances between sensor nodes is essential. In addition to the distance information available for immediate neighbors within a sensing range, the distance estimation of two-hop neighbors can be exploited in various wireless sensor network applications such as sensor localization, robust data transfer against hidden terminals, and geographic greedy routing. In this article, we propose a two-hop distance estimation method, which first obtains the region in which the two-hop neighbor nodes possibly exist and then takes the average of the distances to the points in that region. The improvement in the estimation accuracy achieved by the proposed method is analyzed in comparison with a simple summation method that adds two single-hop distances as an estimate of a two-hop distance. Numerical simulation results show that in comparison with other existing distance estimation methods, the proposed method significantly reduces the distance estimation error over a wide range of node densities.