It depends on which approach you follow for realizing localization and which devices are you trying to localize. In general, both RSSI-based and Time-based technique needs few pkts/secs to be effective, but the need to have accurate radio increases the required number of packets.

"Bhatti S, Xu J. Survey of target tracking protocols using wireless sensor network.

Fifth International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Communications, ICWMC’09, IEEE. 2009. " demonstrates the broad-spectrum process of target tracking to save energy in wireless sensor networks.

Link for your reference:

http://www.indjst.org/index.php/indjst/article/viewFile/70102/66983

Thanks to All 

There are mainly two power consumption aspects in sensor network localization (SNL):

1. Radio-range: In order to increase the radio range, one needs to increase the transmits power.

2. Localization technique: There are mainly two kinds of methods used for SNL: distributed and centralized. Each has their own demerits regarding the power consumption.

Distributed methods require lots of iteration to reach a solution. In the case of centralized methods, all distance data must be sent to the central server. It requires a high amount of communication to send the data to the central server, so the power consumption is high.

Obviously, there is a trade-off between the localization accuracy and the power consumption, I did not come across any such literature which discussed this togeather. (Few review articles are there.)