A Reconfigurable Transmission Scheme for Lossy Image Transmission over Congested Wireless Sensor Networks

In this article it is presented a reconfigurable transmission scheme for the lossy image transmission over congested wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This transmission scheme is based on the quad-tree algorithm for compressing each frame before transmitting it over the network. The proposed architecture: a) performs buffered transmission of quad-tree decomposed packets of an image frame over the WSN, b) measures the time of arrival of all the transmitted data packets that belongs to a single frame, at the receiver side of the network, and correspondingly c) adapts the threshold level of the compression algorithm, at the transmitter side of the network, based on an ad-hoc tuning method. The aim of this reconfiguration scheme, through the tuning of the compression threshold, is to guarantee that the established link in the WSN will provide images independently of the congestion of the network while a trade off between the quality of the received images and the refresh rate. Experimental results are presented that prove the efficacy of the proposed scheme.