A distributed camera network architecture supporting video adaptation

Sparked by the desire to secure human presence in high risk areas, this paper proposes a distributed camera network architecture. This architecture is intended as a robust platform for video surveillance systems. In addition, the proposed system has the ability to collect/capture video streams from cameras at a point-of-interest and deliver a consolidated version of the video to a receiver. To achieve this, video sources are able to discover nodes, adapt content, and transmit adapted video streams to a receiver. Our framework takes into account different issues related to the decentralized peer-to-peer paradigm such as peers´ unreliability, as well as pragmatic aspects like receivers´ heterogeneity. Adaptation ensures that video quality is proportional to bandwidth availability as well as the receiving devices´ resources. Simulation is used to manifest that the framework is robust, reliable and suitable for multiparticipant real-time collaboration and real-life deployment.