Performance Evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 and 802.11 Protocols for Image Transmission in WSNs

Inhalt:
Wireless image transmission presents a particular challenge for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), due to a limited energy budget of wireless sensor nodes. The motivation of our study is an implementation of high-resolution cameras in WSNs for pest monitoring. We are interested in choosing a wireless communication protocol that minimizes the node’s energy consumption, and provides a reliable transfer of a raw high-resolution image from the end device mounted in the field to the remote server where the image will be processed. We test how collisions, data transfer rate limitation and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) influence the energy-efficiency of IEEE 802.15.4 and the IEEE 802.11b/g protocols. Results show that IEEE 802.11 protocol is more energy-efficient than IEEE 802.15.4. The energy consumption is decreasing with the increment of bit rate. On the other hand, communication with a higher bit rate is more susceptible to bit errors for low SNR values. Thus, for both reliable and energy-efficient image transmission, IEEE 802.11 protocol with intermediate bit rates should be used, resulting with estimated node lifetime of 441 days.