A Survey on the Cross-Layer Design for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

Small low-cost multimedia sensors ubiquitously capture and transmit multimedia information from fields to central stations in support of applications. However, Multimedia sensors in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs), have limited resources in terms of their computational capability, memory capability, bandwidth, and battery power, which hinder a wide application of WMSNs. The challenges, issues and solutions in WMSNs regarding QoS, energy efficiency and security have been recently studied. It is highly desirable to incorporate the characteristics of multimedia and information security at the application layer into adaptation and optimization at lower layers in a cross-layer approach. In this paper, we conducted a survey on the recent development of the cross-layer design in WMSNs. Based on our studies, we concluded that that cross-layer approaches are promising solutions and can efficiently support future multimedia application in WMSNs.