Concurrent Transmission Performance Modeling of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Network and Its Experimental Evaluation

Existing studies on wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) lack quantitative evaluations of concurrent video transmissions. In this study, we construct a model to analyze and validate the concurrent performance of the WMSN. First, in order to provide a theoretical basis for experiments, we construct a delay model on IEEE 802.11-based WMSN data link layer by utilizing queuing theory and probability theory. Then, the impacts of different factors (distance, hop count, and concurrent video count) on the video transmission quality (delay, jitter, and channel utilization) of the IEEE 802.11-based WMSN under different network topologies are measured. Theoretical and experimental results show that the IEEE 802.11 protocol can only support four concurrent video transmissions, which makes it unsuitable for high concurrent video transmissions. Therefore, specialized WMSN protocols and algorithms should be developed.