Performance analysis of video encoders for wireless video sensor networks

Wireless video sensor networks (WVSNs) have drawn significant attention in recent years due to the advent of low-cost miniaturized cameras, which makes it feasible to realize large-scale WVSNs for a variety of applications including security surveillance, environmental tracking, and health monitoring. However, the conventional video encoding paradigms are not suitable for WVSNs due to resource constraints such as limited computation power, battery energy, and network bandwidth. In this paper, we evaluated and analyzed the performance of video encoders based on emerging video encoding paradigms such as distributed video coding (DVC) and distributed compressive video sensing (DCVS) for WVSN. The main objective of this work is to provide an insight about the computational complexity and energy consumption of these video encoders, and the quality of reconstruction from the encoded frames. Based on the findings, this paper also provides some guidelines for the selection of appropriate video encoders for a given WVSN application.