Image Transmission over IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee Networks

An image sensor network platform is developed for testing transmission of images over ZigBee networks that support multi-hopping. The ZigBee is a low rate and low power networking technology for short range communications, and it currently uses IEEE 802.15.4 MAC and PHY layers. Both ZigBee networking (NWK) and IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer protocols are implemented on a single M16C microprocessor. Transport layer functionalities such as fragmentation and reassembly are performed at the application layer, since the ZigBee NWK does not have a fragmentation support. The multiple access scheme is CSMA/CA, therefore only the best effort multi-hop transmission of JPEG and JPEG-2000 images are tested; observations and resulting statistics are presented, and open issues are discussed.