According to some related characteristics of wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs), an improved real-time routing protocol (SPEED-RR) with QoS guarantee based on the SPEED protocol is designed, which is mainly used to make an effective compromise between real-time and energy cost so as to ensuring the real-time performance of QoS. In the process of routing discovery, this protocol takes full account of the residual energy of two-hop neighbor nodes, and avoids the occurrence of “routing void” and “rate void”. At the same time, for different services, a control method based on the node sending, receiving data rate and cache queue length is adopt to distinguish the congestion control. In order to make the protocol better applicable in the system, exploring the real-time transmission and energy characteristics of data is necessary, a better routing mechanism is proposed to improve the performance of these two aspects. NS-2 simulation platform is selected to simulate and analyze the improved protocol. Experimental results show that the proposed SPEED-RR protocol can effectively reduce energy consumption, reduce transmission delay, and prolong the network life time.