Performance of Multiple Description Coding in Sensor Networks with Finite Buffers

Sensor networks are usually dense networks where the network diversity can be exploited in order to overcome failures. In this paper, we study the use of multiple description techniques in the context of sensor networks where the cause of failures is due to the usual practical constraint of having finite buffers in the sensors, instead of the more traditional case of link failures considered in previous research. Although from a theoretical point of view we observe that the use of more descriptions provides usually better performance, we show experimentally that this is not the case in practice, when real constraints are introduced, such as finite buffers and the presence of header information, necessary for any real application. Our main result is that the optimal number of descriptions, in terms of average distortion, decreases as the fraction of header information increases for a given buffer size