A QoS-based energy-aware MAC protocol for wireless multimedia sensor networks

Emerging applications like video surveillance, telemedicine and traffic monitoring requires multimedia transmission over wireless sensor networks. Offering some precise QoS-guarantee (e.g.end-to-end delay and bandwidth requirement) for wireless multimedia over already battery-constrained sensor networks raises significant challenges. This demands for a suitable sensory MAC protocol capable of achieving application-specific QoS. In this paper we have proposed a new QoS-based sensory MAC protocol, which not only adapts to application-oriented QoS, but also attempts to conserve energy without violating QoS-constraints. Performance modelling, analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is capable of providing lower delay and better throughput, at the cost of reasonable energy consumption, in comparison to other existing sensory MAC protocols.