MeshVision: an adaptive wireless mesh network video surveillance system

Abstract

The major surveillance camera manufacturers have begun incorporating wireless networking functionality into their products to enable wireless access. However, the video feeds from such cameras can only be accessed within the transmission range of the cameras. These cameras must be connected to backbone infrastructure in order to access them from more than one hop away. This network infrastructure is both time-consuming and expensive to install, making it impractical in many rapid deployment situations (e.g., to provide temporary surveillance at a crime scene). To overcome this problem, we propose the MeshVision system that incorporates wireless mesh network functionality directly into the cameras. Video streams can be pulled from any camera within a network of MeshVision cameras, irrespective of how many hops away that camera is. To manage the trade-off between video stream quality and the number of video streams that could be concurrently accessed over the network, MeshVision uses a bandwidth adaptation mechanism. This mechanism monitors the wireless network looking for drops in link quality or signs of congestion and adjusts the quality of existing video streams in order to reduce that congestion. A significant benefit of the approach is that it is of low cost, requiring only a software upgrade of the cameras.