A study of QoS Aware MAC Protocols for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

The availability of inexpensive hardware such as CMOS cameras and microphones has raised the development of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs), These networks are collection of wireless interconnected devices that are able to universally access multimedia content such as video and audio streams, still images, and scalar sensor data from the environment. WMSN has gained popularity because of their flexibility in solving problems in different domains. They have potential to change our lives in many different ways. It is employed in wide range of application areas such as target detection and tracking, military and environmental mentoring. These applications are critical to the extent of saving Human life. Hence Reliable service and timely information is very important requirement in WMSN. QoS in WMSN has some techniques and provide such reliable and authenticated information. QoS techniques are employed in each layer of the protocol stack. Emphasis is given to QOS support at the MAC layer. This paper provides a study on QOS aware MAC protocols in Wireless Multimedia Sensor networks and also highlights the main current challenges in designing such protocols. Keywords— Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks, Sensor Node,QoS,MAC protocols..