Exploration of target architecture for a wireless camera based sensor node

Abstract

The challenges associated with wireless vision sensor networks are low energy consumption, less bandwidth and limited processing capabilities. In order to meet these challenges different approaches are proposed. Research in wireless vision sensor networks has been focused on two different assumptions, first is sending all data to the central base station without local processing, second approach is based on conducting all processing locally at the sensor node and transmitting only the final results. Our research is focused on partitioning the vision processing tasks between Senor node and central base station. In this paper we have added the exploration dimension to perform some of the vision tasks such as image capturing, background subtraction, segmentation and Tiff Group4 compression on FPGA while communication on microcontroller. The remaining vision processing tasks i.e. morphology, labeling, bubble remover and classification are processed on central base station. Our results show that the introduction of FPGA for some of the visual tasks will result in a longer life time for the visual sensor node while the architecture is still programmable.