Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks: Characteristics, Architecture of Sensor Node and Routing Protocols

In recent years, the growth of wireless sensor networks has resulted in immense research and thousands of peer-reviewed publications. This paper mainly contemplates on the characteristics of WMSNs, architecture of a sensor node and protocols of WMSNs. Many papers concentrate on the scalar sensor networks which are used for measuring the physical phenomena such as pressure, temperature, humidity, density and location of physical objects. The point of emphasis of this paper is on how a sensor node is used in transmission of multimedia contents such as images, audio and video streaming and also the scalar data and the related protocols are used to achieve the goal. Since in WMSNs the time is critical element, while describing the protocols the authors have stressed its importance.