Intelligent video surveillance platform for wireless multimedia sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) are increasingly being deployed for surveillance and monitoring applications. WMSNs applications produce large amount of data, which require high transmission rates. An efficient and seamless delivery of multimedia services in WMSNs is still a challenging task. This article proposes an intelligent video surveillance platform (IVSP) for wireless multimedia sensor networks. IVSP presents the design of a networked system for joint rate control and error control of video over resource-constrained embedded devices. First, a combination of two different congestion indicators is introduced to differentiate between congestion levels and handle them accordingly. Second, a feedback-based rate controller is developed to maximize received video quality, in which sensor nodes can adaptively adjust their sending rates. Finally, a different retransmission mechanism for different packets is proposed. Lost packets can be stored temporarily and resend when free channel is available to avoid congestion. The core component of IVSP is an open source hardware platform, which is based on Raspberry Pi sensor nodes. IVSP is extensively evaluated on 7 Raspberry Pi sensor nodes. We present the results of 7-node real-world deployment of IVSP in a video surveillance application and show that it works well in long-term deployments.