XL-WMSN: cross-layer quality of service protocol for wireless multimedia sensor networks

Energy conservation has been the prime motivation behind the design of conventional protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, recent trends toward high data rate multimedia communication over WSNs demand traffic- and deadline-aware content delivery with minimum energy expenditure. The basic quality of service requirement in wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) is time-bound data delivery. The conventional-layered protocol design solutions are inefficient, as real-time content delivery requires interactions between multiple layers like application for traffic categorization, network for real-time delivery, and media access control (MAC) for prioritized medium access with minimum energy expenditure. In this paper a cross-layer solution (XL-WMSN) is proposed for real-time data delivery. The XL-WMSN provides interaction between energy-based admission control, delay- and interference-aware routing, and dynamic duty cycle assignment at MAC layer. Simulation analysis shows that XL-WMSN increases the probability of delivering multimedia content within their allocated deadline and is more efficient than existing solutions.