Patent ID: 8849926

Claim:
A method of self-organizing sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network (WSN), the WSN comprising a plurality of sensor nodes in communication with a master node, the method comprising: distributing/installing each one of the plurality of sensor nodes randomly at one of a plurality of predefined absolute geographical locations, without relating a node identification with an installed predefined geographical location, wherein at least two of the sensor nodes are anchor nodes of known identification and absolute geographical locations; configuring each of the sensor nodes to in turn transmit consecutive messages at a plurality of pre-defined and incrementally increasing transmitted power levels to identify a lowest pre-defined power level that enables message reception at each of a plurality of other sensor nodes; detecting receipt of the transmitted messages at each of the sensor nodes and notifying the master node as to the identity of each sensor node receiving the transmitted message and the transmitted power level of the message to define a neighbourhood for each sensor node; determining relative locations of each sensor node in relation to other sensor nodes within the WSN based on the neighbourhood for each sensor node, wherein said neighbourhood for each sensor node is defined by reception of messages transmitted by said sensor node at increasing pre-defined transmitted power levels by a plurality of surrounding sensor nodes; and relating the identification of each sensor node with a geographical location from a list of said predefined absolute geographical locations based on the relative locations of the sensor nodes based on results of the neighborhoods, the known locations of the two anchor nodes, and the plurality of predefined absolute locations.