Performance analysis of wireless video sensors in video surveillance

Wireless video sensor networks (WVSN) have been envisioned for a wide range of important applications, including battlefield intelligence, security monitoring, and environmental tracking. Compared to traditional communication systems, the WVSN operates under a set of unique resource constraints, including limitations with respect to energy supply, on-board computational capability, and transmission bandwidth. The objective of this work is to study the resource utilization behavior of a wireless video sensor and analyze its performance under these resource constraints. More specifically, we develop an analytic power-rate-distortion (P-R-D) model to characterize the inherent relationship between the power consumption of a video encoder and its rate-distortion performance. Based on the P-R-D analysis and a simplified model for wireless transmission power, we study the optimum power allocation between video encoding and wireless transmission. We consider an important scenario in wireless video sensing - wireless video surveillance, and analyze the performance limit of the wireless video sensor. The analysis and results obtained in this paper provide an important guideline for practical wireless video sensor design.