Analysis of QoS parameters for multimedia streaming in Wireless Sensor Networks

With rapid development of microelectronics and low-cost cost multimedia hardware, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have started to evolve into Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs), where the emphasis is given on acquisition, processing and transmission of multimedia content through WSN. While the idea of multimedia sensor networks has been existing for some time, very little research is performed in the area of hardware requirements for enabling WMSNs. One of the existing problems today is establishing desired Quality of Service (QoS) for multimedia streaming when using existing WSN hardware (not designed for multimedia use). In order to analyze QoS parameters for various WSN hardwares this paper proposes a QoS testbed with a developed application, designed for estimating critical QoS parameters. Demonstration of the proposed QoS testbed is performed on XBee WSN modules where the basic set of measurements and modeling is presented. From the obtained results it can be concluded that various parameters impact QoS parameters for multimedia streaming in WSN and by optimizing these parameters it is possible to maximize Quality of Service for multimedia streaming while minimizing error count and the packet latency.