Transmitting and Gathering Streaming Data in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks within Expected Network Lifetime

Abstract

Using multimedia sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can significantly enhance the capability of WSNs for event description. Different kinds of holes can easily appear in WSNs. How to efficiently transmit multi-media streaming data and bypass all kinds of holes is a challenging issue. Moreover, some applications do not need WSNs to work for a long lifetime, e.g. monitoring an erupting volcano. These applications generally expect that WSNs can provide continuous streaming data during a relatively short expected network lifetime. Two basic problems are: (1) gathering as much data as possible within an expected network lifetime; (2) minimizing transmission delay within an expected network lifetime. In this paper, we proposed a cross-layer approach to facilitate the continuous one shot event recording in WSNs. We first propose the maximum streaming data gathering (MSDG) algorithm and the minimum transmission delay (MTD) algorithm to adjust the transmission radius of sensor nodes in the physical layer. Following that the two-phase geographical greedy forwarding (TPGF) routing algorithm is proposed in the network layer for exploring one/multiple optimized hole-bypassing paths. Simulation results show that our algorithms can effectively solve the identified problems.