Survey on QoS Aware Routing Protocols for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) has made it possible to send multimedia data on small sensing devices. The multimedia content in such networks increase the level of information collected from the monitored field, enlarging the range of coverage, and multi-view support. It is proved by researchers that the multi-tier network architecture is more beneficial than a single-tier in terms of energy-efficiency, scalability and reliability for multimedia data transmission. In this context, application like intrusion detection appears as a promising application of multi-tier WMSNs, where the lower tier can detect the intruder using scalar sensors, and the higher tier camera nodes will be woken up to send real time video sequences detected from the monitoring area. The multimedia data are quite different from the scalar data generated in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), which demands real time delivery of data to target end to increase the Quality of Service (QoS). In this paper, the QoS aware routing protocols for WMSNs are surveyed with the performance issues and the design challenges of each protocol for WMSNs are discussed.