PTZ Camera Scheduling for Selected Area Coverage in Visual Sensor Networks

Abstract

Visual sensor networks (VSNs) can track multiple pedestrians and capture high-quality videos of the monitored area. Therefore, VSNs is ideal for providing good broadcast service. In sports broadcasting, a basic requirement for broadcasters is to report the significant events as quickly as possible when they take place. To meet this requirement, we propose the Camera Scheduling for selected area coverage problem (CamS). Considering that Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) camera sensor has the flexibility of configuring its angle of view in both horizontal and vertical dimensions, we apply PTZ camera sensors to solve CamS. A polynomial time optimal algorithm that schedules PTZ camera sensors elegantly is devised for CamS. We set many realistic application scenarios in simulation and thoroughly study how our algorithm's performance is affected by different environmental parameters, including angle velocity, the number of camera sensors and the number of sub-areas.