Energy-efficient packet relaying in wireless image sensor networks exploiting the sensing relevancies of source nodes and DWT coding

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2013

Authors

Daniel G. Costa (Author) Other; Luiz Affonso Guedes (Author) Other; Francisco Vasques (Author) FEUP; Paulo Portugal (Author) FEUP

Journal

Title: Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks

Vol. 2 No. 3

Pages: 424-448

Publisher: MDPI

Indexing

Scopus - 9 Citations

INSPEC

Scientific classification

FOS: Engineering and technology > Electrical engineering, Electronic engineering, Information engineering

CORDIS: Technological sciences > Engineering > Electrical engineering

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-009-0WM

DOI: 10.3390/jsan2030424

Abstract (EN): When camera-enabled sensors are deployed for visual monitoring, a new set of innovative applications is allowed, enriching the use of wireless sensor network technologies. In these networks, energy-efficiency is a highly desired optimization issue, mainly because transmission of images and video streams over resource-constrained sensor networks is more stringent than transmission of conventional scalar data. Due to the nature of visual monitoring, that follows a directional sensing model, camera-enabled sensors may have different relevancies for the application, according to the desired monitoring tasks and the current sensors' poses and fields of view. Exploiting this concept, each data packet may be associated with a priority level related to the packet's origins, which may be in turn mapped to an energy threshold level. In such way, we propose an energy-efficient relaying mechanism where data packets are only forwarded to the next hop if the associated energy threshold level is below the current energy level of the relaying node. Thus, packets from low-relevant source nodes will be silently dropped when the current energy level of intermediate nodes run below the pre-defined thresholds. Doing so, energy is saved potentially prolonging the network lifetime. Besides the sensing relevancies of source nodes, the relevance of DWT subbands for reconstruction of original images is also considered. This allows the creation of a second level of packet prioritization, assuring a minimal level of image quality even for the least relevant source nodes. We performed simulations for the proposed relaying mechanism, assessing the expected performance over a traditional relaying paradigm. (41 refs)

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 25