Energy-Constrained Distortion Reduction Optimization for Wavelet-Based Coded Image Transmission in Wireless Sensor Networks

Image transmissions in wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) are often energy constrained. They also have requirement on distortion minimization, which may be achieved through unequal error protection (UEP) based communication approaches. In related literature with regard to wireless multimedia transmissions, significantly different importance levels between image-pixel-position information and image-pixel-value information have not been fully exploited by existing UEP schemes. In this paper, we propose an innovative image-pixel-position information based resource allocation scheme to optimize image transmission quality with strict energy budget constraint for image applications in WMSNs, and it works by exploring these uniquely different importance levels among image data streams. Network resources are optimally allocated cross PHY, MAC and APP layers regarding inter-segment dependency, and energy efficiency is assured while the image transmission quality is optimized. Simulation results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach in achieving the optimal image quality and energy efficiency. The performance gain in terms of distortion reduction is especially prominent with strict energy budget constraints and lower image compression ratios.