Using passive clustering to enhance video quality in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Video Sensor Networks are foreseen to be of a paramount importance in realizing a wide spectrum of applications, mainly surveillance, target tracking and environment monitoring. In this paper, we propose a combination of an improved clustering algorithm and directed diffusion, a well-known data-centric routing paradigm in sensor networks. On the one hand, clustering allows for saving bandwidth required by rich and intensive data of video applications. On the other hand, the network lifetime is prolonged by modifying passive clustering rules for building/maintaining the topology so an energy load balancing is achieved among the network nodes. We performed extensive computer simulations and showed that our solution outperforms original directed diffusion as well as when it is combined with passive clustering without energy considerations. In terms of video quality, our proposal achieves also good performances compared to directed diffusion.