Wireless Sensor Networks, a novel technology about acquiring and processing information, have been proposed for a multitude of diverse applications. The problem of self-localization, that is, determining where a given node is physically or relatively located in the networks, is a challenging one, and yet extremely crucial for many applications. In this paper, the evaluation criterion of the performance and the taxonomy for wireless sensor networks self-localization systems and algorithms are described, the principles and characteristics of recent representative localization approaches are discussed and presented, and the directions of research in this area are introduced.