Gaussian distributed deployment of relay nodes for wireless Visual Sensor Networks

The visual sensing capability of a Visual Sensor Network (VSN) makes it a very effective tool for applications such as large scale surveillance, environmental monitoring and object tracking. The image sensing, processing and storing functions of the VSN, combined with its function of transmitting and forwarding data towards the sink, consumes more energy and increases the well known energy-hole problem in the network. In this paper, we propose to deploy a Gaussian distributed relay network over pre existing uniform random VSN so as to avoid the energy-hole problem. By forming a heterogeneous wireless sensor network with low-cost relay nodes (RNs), lifetime of the VSN is prolonged with minimal additional cost. We use the energy model of image compression enabled VSNs and determine optimal parameters for the Gaussian deployment of the relay network.