Functionally Layered Video Coding for River Surveillance

This paper proposes a new type of layered video coding for an application of river monitoring. A sensor node of the system produces the bit stream functionally separated into three layers. The first layer contains component signals effective for a function of water level detection. The second layer contains signals for thumb-nail video browsing. Each of them is transmitted at very low bit rate for regular monitoring. The third layer contains additional data necessary for decoding original video signal. It is transmitted when the necessity arises. The original video signal is decomposed into component band signals by the Haar transform in a sensor node. Experimental results show which band signals should be included into the first layer for water level detection based on the maximum likelihood estimation. It becomes possible to reduce power consumption in a sensor node by distributing computational load via internet and by sharing the temporal and spatial processing between "compression" and "recognition".