Self-orienting wireless multimedia sensor networks for occlusion-free viewpoints

Wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSN) are formations of a large number of compact form-factor computing devices that can capture multimedia content, such as video and audio, and communicate them over wireless channels. The efficiency of a WMSN heavily depends on the correct orientation (i.e., view) of its individual sensory units in the field. In this paper, we study the problem of self-orientation in WMSN, that is finding the most beneficial orientation for all multimedia sensors to maximize multimedia coverage. We propose a new algorithm to determine a node's multimedia coverage and find the sensor orientation that minimizes the negative effect of occlusions and overlapping regions in the sensing field. Our approach enables multimedia sensor nodes to compute their directional coverage leading to an efficient and self-configurable sensor orientation calculation. By using simulations, we show that the occlusion-free viewpoint approach increases the multimedia coverage significantly. The self-orientation methodology is designed in the form of a distributed algorithm, making it a suitable candidate for deployment in practical systems.