In this letter, we consider the localization problem using received signal strength in wireless sensor networks. Working with a simple non-cooperative scenario in an outdoor localization, we transform the received signal strength measurement model to an alternative optimization problem which is much easier to solve and less complex compared to finding the optimum solutions from the maximum likelihood estimator. Then, we can solve a sequence of nonconvex problems as a range constrainted optimization problem, while the estimated solution also guarantees a monotonic convergence to the original solution. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of our proposed approach.