A hybrid scheme for video transmission over wireless multimedia sensor networks

The introduction of multimedia capable sensors has posed new challeges for classic Wireless Sensor Networks that are henceforth required to provide both power and quality efficent routing. This paper proposes an innovative protocol for power and perceived QoS aware routing of multimedia content over Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks. The proposed scheme comprises the advantages of both energy efficient hierarchical routing and video packet schedulling according to the packet's importance. The hierarchical routing algorithms are often utilized for bandwidth efficiency and power control over Wireless Sensor Networks. In addition, packet scheduling is widely adopted as an effective rate adaptation technique in wireless multimedia communications. Both these techniques are combined in a proposed scheme which firstly, utilizes nodes with the highest residual energy and low power-cost paths, in order to perform the routing and secondly, predicts the distortion of video packets and selects to either drop them or transmit them according to the current channel bandwidth limitations. The simulation results prove the efficiency of the proposed combined scheme in terms of power consumption and received video distortion (PSNR).