Survey of QoS Routing Protocols in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

The emergence of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) has stimulated the refocusing of research from conventional scalar Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to WMSNs. Currently, because of their prevalence WMSNs are used in different applications. Due to the unique features of WMSNs, fulfilling Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for a variety of applications is the challenge. QoS routing is a backbone of WMSNs and plays a vital role in satisfying QoS requirements. The performance of QoS routing depends upon the selection of an optimal path or paths. Path selection is based on evaluation of a cost function using various routing metrics. A careful blend of such metrics in a routing cost function guarantees a committed level of QoS. This survey uses number of routing metrics as criteria for categorizing state-of-the-art QoS WMSNs routing techniques. In addition, open issues and future research directions to further develop efficient routing protocols to guarantee QoS are discussed.