Remote image capturing with low-cost and low-power wireless camera nodes

Wireless visual sensor networks provide feature-rich information about their surrounding and can thus be used as a universal measurement tool for a great number of applications. Existing solutions, however, have mainly been focused on high sample rate applications, such as video surveillance, object detection and tracking. In this paper, we present a wireless camera node architecture that targets low sample rate applications (e.g., manual inspections and meter reading). The major design considerations are a long system lifetime, a small size and a low production cost.We present the overall architecture with its individual design choices, and evaluate the architecture with respect to its application constraints. With a typical image acquisition cost of 1.5 J for medium quality images and a quiescent power demand of only 7 uW, the evaluation results demonstrate that long operation periods of the order of years can be achieved in low sample rate scenarios.