Energy-efficient transmission of wavelet-based images in wireless sensor networks

Vincent Lecuire (1) , Cristian Duran-Faundez (1) , Nicolas Krommenacker (1)

1 CRAN - Centre de Recherche en Automatique de Nancy

In this paper, we propose a self-adaptive image transmission scheme driven by energy efficiency considerations in order to be suitable for wireless sensor networks. It is based on wavelet image transform and semi-reliable transmission to achieve energy conservation. Wavelet image transform provides data decomposition in multiple levels of resolution, so the image can be divided into packets with different priorities. Semi-reliable transmission enables priority-based packet discarding by intermediate nodes according to their battery's state-of-charge. Such an image transmission approach provides a graceful trade-off between the reconstructed images quality and the sensor nodes' lifetime. An analytical study in terms of dissipated energy is performed to compare the self-adaptive image transmission scheme to a fully reliable scheme. Since image processing is computationally intensive and operates on a large data set, the cost of the wavelet image transform is considered in the energy consumption analysis. Results show up to 80% reduction in the energy consumption acheived by our proposal compared to a non energy-aware one, with the guarantee for the image quality to be lower-bounded.

Mots clés: Wireless sensor network; image communication; energy conservation

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]; Traitement des images [eess.IV]

Vincent Lecuire, Cristian Duran-Faundez, Nicolas Krommenacker. Energy-efficient transmission of wavelet-based images in wireless sensor networks. EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing, 2007, 2007, pp.ID 47345. ⟨10.1155/2007/47345⟩. ⟨hal-00146211⟩