Abstract
Wireless Visual Sensor Networks (WVSNs) where camera-equipped sensor nodes can capture, process and transmit image/video information have become an important new research area. As compared to the traditional wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that can only transmit scalar information (e.g., temperature), the visual data in WVSNs enable much wider applications, such as visual security surveillance and visual wildlife monitoring. However, as compared to the scalar data in WSNs, visual data is much bigger and more complicated so intelligent schemes are required to capture/process/transmit visual data in limited resources (hardware capability and bandwidth) WVSNs. WVSNs introduce new multi-disciplinary research opportunities of topics that include visual sensor hardware, image and multimedia capture and processing, wireless communication and networking. In this paper, we survey existing research efforts on the visual sensor hardware, visual sensor coverage/deployment, and visual data capture/processing/transmission issues in WVSNs. We conclude that WVSN research is still in an early age and there are still many open issues that have not been fully addressed. More new novel multi-disciplinary, cross-layered, distributed and collaborative solutions should be devised to tackle these challenging issues in WVSNs.
Highlights
The wireless sensor networks (WSNs) represent a blooming technology where they can probe and collect environmental information, such as temperature, atmospheric pressure and irradiation to provide ubiquitous sensing, computing and communication capabilities
Sensor nodes can send the captured visual data to provide richer sensing and monitoring information, which enables more applications in areas such as wide-life observation and security surveillance. These kinds of camera-equipped sensor networks are known as Wireless Visual Sensor Networks (WVSNs)
The WVSN is totally different from a traditional WSN in five ways: (1) Field of View coverage requirement for data source nodes: In traditional WSNs, when an event occurs, the nodes within the sensing range of the event will sense the event and become data source nodes to transmit the sensed data back to the sink
Summary
The wireless sensor networks (WSNs) represent a blooming technology where they can probe and collect environmental information, such as temperature, atmospheric pressure and irradiation to provide ubiquitous sensing, computing and communication capabilities. Thanks to the rapid advancement of sensor technology, equipping sensors with cameras is possible [1] In this way, sensor nodes can send the captured visual data to provide richer sensing and monitoring information, which enables more applications in areas such as wide-life observation and security surveillance. Sensor nodes can send the captured visual data to provide richer sensing and monitoring information, which enables more applications in areas such as wide-life observation and security surveillance These kinds of camera-equipped sensor networks are known as Wireless Visual Sensor Networks (WVSNs). As a result some important scenes (e.g., face of the intruder or license plate of the car for security surveillance applications) might not be captured due to the limited angle of the camera or the obstacle blocking the view This kind of occlusion problem requires more sensor nodes to be deployed.
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