Signal Processing for an Ultra Low Power Wireless Video Camera

This paper describes the system design considerations of an ultra low power wireless camera (Figure 1). The function of this camera is to acquire, compress, code and transmit video data over a wireless link. The data rate is variable up to a maximum of 1Mbps (the image sensor has a spatial resolution of 256×256 quantized to 8 bits/pixel). Many of the design issues faced in the context of our wireless camera are common to those in other wireless applications. Total system power (computation as well as transmission) averaged over the normal operating conditions of the device should be minimized to maximize battery lifetime.