Cross layer approach for joint optimization of multimedia quality, content protection and communication energy efficiency in wireless multimedia sensor networks

Selective encryption approaches for efficient multimedia content protection is proposed in wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) by many authors. Apart from these methodologies, the other important aspect which is discussed in some literatures is the combined optimization of multimedia quality, content protection and energy issues pertaining to communication. However in these joint optimization methods the preprocessing power of the encoder such as H.264/MPEG4 is not considered. In this paper the joint optimization framework along with the preprocessing power is proposed for WMSNs. Moreover while interplaying to realize video transmission quality, security, and energy efficiency jointly, the methods must be carefully chosen since these parameters are related in a closed form. First a selective video encryption framework based on Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is proposed for prioritized frames of H.264/AVC to improve the multimedia content protection at the application layer. Second based on the priority of the frames the network energy saving scheme is proposed at the physical layer on cross layer basis to reduce the energy consumption in WMSNs so that well-balanced quality of service (QoS) can be maintained. The experimental result demonstrated that the proposed joint selective video encryption framework and energy saving scheme in WMSNs reflected better contribution of PSNR and MSE estimation in favor of the recovered data for quality measurement with significant content protection to video streams while maintaining the original video compression efficiency, compression ratio and at the same time showing the effectiveness in energy efficiency. Moreover, the proposed scheme provides a good trade-off between encryption robustness, flexibility, and real-time processing.