This paper focuses on the problem of large positioning error of the DV-Hop algorithm. To overcome the defects of DV-Hop algorithm when solving the average jump distance and the unknown node position, this paper proposes an improved DV-Hop positioning algorithm based on ranging correction and bat optimization. Firstly, the minimum mean squared error criterion is used to solve the average jump distance between anchor nodes while a correction factor is added to reduce the ranging error. Secondly, the chaotic mapping strategy is applied to initialize the population and set the threshold M to control the number of mappings, and besides, the speed-weighted strategy is used to control the step length of the search to enhance the ability of the bat algorithm to jump out of the local optimum. Finally, the Improved Bat Algorithm is used to determine the location of the unknown node. The simulation results show that the proposed positioning algorithm has higher positioning accuracy, which is improved by 32.35%, 18.80% and 8.16% compared with DV-Hop algorithm, BADV-Hop algorithm and PSODV-Hop algorithm, respectively.