Enabling low bit-rate and reliable video surveillance over practical wireless sensor network

With the rapid development of hardware and embedded systems, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are being developed for surveillance applications. While meriting more in-depth research and development, deploying a practical WSN for surveillance is challenging due to the limited power and bandwidth of the battery-operated sensor nodes. In this paper, we first propose an energy-efficient image transportation strategy through motion detection. In case of data delivery over long distance, this paper further investigates the use of cooperative communications to design a reliable image transmission scheme over WSN, and demonstrates its effectiveness in improving network reliability in wireless multimedia sensor networks.