Distributed video coding for wireless video sensor networks: a review of the state-of-the-art architectures

Distributed video coding (DVC) is a relatively new video coding architecture originated from two fundamental theorems namely, Slepian–Wolf and Wyner–Ziv. Recent research developments have made DVC attractive for applications in the emerging domain of wireless video sensor networks (WVSNs). This paper reviews the state-of-the-art DVC architectures with a focus on understanding their opportunities and gaps in addressing the operational requirements and application needs of WVSNs

Demo : distributed video coding applications in wireless multimedia sensor networks

Novel distributed video coding (DVC) architectures developed by the IBBT DVC group realize state-of-the-art video coding efficiency under stringent energy restrictions, while supporting error-resilience and scalability. Therefore, these architectures are particularly attractive for application scenarios involving low-complexity energy-constrained wireless visual sensors. This demo presents the scenarios, which are considered to be the most promising areas of integration for IBBT's DVC systems, considering feasibility and commercial applicability

Distributed coding of endoscopic video

Triggered by the challenging prerequisites of wireless capsule endoscopic video technology, this paper presents a novel distributed video coding (DVC) scheme, which employs an original hash-based side-information creation method at the decoder. In contrast to existing DVC schemes, the proposed codec generates high quality side-information at the decoder, even under the strenuous motion conditions encountered in endoscopic video. Performance evaluation using broad endoscopic video material shows that the proposed approach brings notable and consistent compression gains over various state-of-the-art video codecs at the additional benefit of vastly reduced encoding complexity

A Survey on Multimedia-Based Cross-Layer Optimization in Visual Sensor Networks

Visual sensor networks (VSNs) comprised of battery-operated electronic devices endowed with low-resolution cameras have expanded the applicability of a series of monitoring applications. Those types of sensors are interconnected by ad hoc error-prone wireless links, imposing stringent restrictions on available bandwidth, end-to-end delay and packet error rates. In such context, multimedia coding is required for data compression and error-resilience, also ensuring energy preservation over the path(s) toward the sink and improving the end-to-end perceptual quality of the received media. Cross-layer optimization may enhance the expected efficiency of VSNs applications, disrupting the conventional information flow of the protocol layers. When the inner characteristics of the multimedia coding techniques are exploited by cross-layer protocols and architectures, higher efficiency may be obtained in visual sensor networks. This paper surveys recent research on multimedia-based cross-layer optimization, presenting the proposed strategies and mechanisms for transmission rate adjustment, congestion control, multipath selection, energy preservation and error recovery. We note that many multimedia-based cross-layer optimization solutions have been proposed in recent years, each one bringing a wealth of contributions to visual sensor networks

Correlation-based communication in wireless multimedia sensor networks

Wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) are networks of interconnected devices that allow retrieving video and audio streams, still images, and scalar data from the environment. In a densely deployed WMSN, there exists correlation among the observations of camera sensors with overlapped coverage areas, which introduces substantial data redundancy in the network. In this dissertation, efficient communication schemes are designed for WMSNs by leveraging the correlation of visual information observed by camera sensors. First, a spatial correlation model is developed to estimate the correlation of visual information and the joint entropy of multiple correlated camera sensors. The compression performance of correlated visual information is then studied. An entropy-based divergence measure is proposed to predict the compression efficiency of performing joint coding on the images from correlated cameras. Based on the predicted compression efficiency, a clustered coding technique is proposed that maximizes the overall compression gain of the visual information gathered in WMSNs. The correlation of visual information is then utilized to design a network scheduling scheme to maximize the lifetime of WMSNs. Furthermore, as many WMSN applications require QoS support, a correlation-aware QoS routing algorithm is introduced that can efficiently deliver visual information under QoS constraints. Evaluation results show that, by utilizing the correlation of visual information in the communication process, the energy efficiency and networking performance of WMSNs could be improved significantly.PhDCommittee Chair: Akyildiz, Ian; Committee Member: Ammar, Mostafa; Committee Member: Ji, Chuanyi; Committee Member: Li, Ye; Committee Member: Romberg, Justi

Distributed Video Coding: Selecting the Most Promising Application Scenarios

Distributed Video Coding (DVC) is a new video coding paradigm based on two major Information Theory results: the Slepian–Wolf and Wyner–Ziv theorems. Recently, practical DVC solutions have been proposed with promising results; however, there is still a need to study in a more systematic way the set of application scenarios for which DVC may bring major advantages. This paper intends to contribute for the identification of the most DVC friendly application scenarios, highlighting the expected benefits and drawbacks for each studied scenario. This selection is based on a proposed methodology which involves the characterization and clustering of the applications according to their most relevant characteristics, and their matching with the main potential DVC benefits

Energy Consumption Of Visual Sensor Networks: Impact Of Spatio-Temporal Coverage

Wireless visual sensor networks (VSNs) are expected to play a major role in future IEEE 802.15.4 personal area networks (PAN) under recently-established collision-free medium access control (MAC) protocols, such as the IEEE 802.15.4e-2012 MAC. In such environments, the VSN energy consumption is affected by the number of camera sensors deployed (spatial coverage), as well as the number of captured video frames out of which each node processes and transmits data (temporal coverage). In this paper, we explore this aspect for uniformly-formed VSNs, i.e., networks comprising identical wireless visual sensor nodes connected to a collection node via a balanced cluster-tree topology, with each node producing independent identically-distributed bitstream sizes after processing the video frames captured within each network activation interval. We derive analytic results for the energy-optimal spatio-temporal coverage parameters of such VSNs under a-priori known bounds for the number of frames to process per sensor and the number of nodes to deploy within each tier of the VSN. Our results are parametric to the probability density function characterizing the bitstream size produced by each node and the energy consumption rates of the system of interest. Experimental results reveal that our analytic results are always within 7% of the energy consumption measurements for a wide range of settings. In addition, results obtained via a multimedia subsystem show that the optimal spatio-temporal settings derived by the proposed framework allow for substantial reduction of energy consumption in comparison to ad-hoc settings. As such, our analytic modeling is useful for early-stage studies of possible VSN deployments under collision-free MAC protocols prior to costly and time-consuming experiments in the field.Comment: to appear in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 201

Distributed Coding/Decoding Complexity in Video Sensor Networks

Video Sensor Networks (VSNs) are recent communication infrastructures used to capture and transmit dense visual information from an application context. In such large scale environments which include video coding, transmission and display/storage, there are several open problems to overcome in practical implementations. This paper addresses the most relevant challenges posed by VSNs, namely stringent bandwidth usage and processing time/power constraints. In particular, the paper proposes a novel VSN architecture where large sets of visual sensors with embedded processors are used for compression and transmission of coded streams to gateways, which in turn transrate the incoming streams and adapt them to the variable complexity requirements of both the sensor encoders and end-user decoder terminals. Such gateways provide real-time transcoding functionalities for bandwidth adaptation and coding/decoding complexity distribution by transferring the most complex video encoding/decoding tasks to the transcoding gateway at the expense of a limited increase in bit rate. Then, a method to reduce the decoding complexity, suitable for system-on-chip implementation, is proposed to operate at the transcoding gateway whenever decoders with constrained resources are targeted. The results show that the proposed method achieves good performance and its inclusion into the VSN infrastructure provides an additional level of complexity control functionality

A Comprehensive Review of Distributed Coding Algorithms for Visual Sensor Network (VSN)

Since the invention of low cost camera, it has been widely incorporated into the sensor node in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to form the Visual Sensor Network (VSN). However, the use of camera is bringing with it a set of new challenges, because all the sensor nodes are powered by batteries. Hence, energy consumption is one of the most critical issues that have to be taken into consideration. In addition to this, the use of batteries has also limited the resources (memory, processor) that can be incorporated into the sensor node. The life time of a VSN decreases quickly as the image is transferred to the destination. One of the solutions to the aforementioned problem is to reduce the data to be transferred in the network by using image compression. In this paper, a comprehensive survey and analysis of distributed coding algorithms that can be used to encode images in VSN is provided. This also includes an overview of these algorithms, together with their advantages and deficiencies when implemented in VSN. These algorithms are then compared at the end to determine the algorithm that is more suitable for VSN