# On the Feasibility of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks over IEEE 802.15.5 Mesh Topologies
## 2 Related Work  
In spite of the proven advantages arising from the use of the IEEE 802.15.5 standard, to the knowledge of the authors, there is no other work that makes use of this technology in WMSNs. There are however a number of proposals that use mesh communication for transmitting multimedia flows [5]. However, they do not consider Wireless Sensor Networks but rather focus on less energy-constrained standards such as 802.11. In this regard, the purpose of this work is twofold: first, to carry out a first evaluation of the performance of a mesh standard, the IEEE 802.15.5, for video transmission; second, to provide simulation tools to help evaluate further improvements for multimedia transmission made to the original standard. The performance of WSNs and WMSNs should be assessed using real WSN/WMSN hardware before actual deployment, for example, using a test bed in the laboratory. However, it is best practice to make sure that no software/hardware errors are introduced before test-bed experiments are carried out. Finding and correcting these errors is usually a tedious and time-consuming task, and simulation is a powerful tool that helps do this in a much faster and easier way than dealing directly with hardware. In this regard, [PERSON] [6] studied the communication performance of the most popular WSN commercial platforms to date in data-intensive applications. Results showed significant delays limiting the maximum data throughput at both the sender and the receiver. The best results were obtained using MicaZ devices [7]. [PERSON] also showed that more effort should be made on the development of new hardware platforms, but also that more realistic simulation models are needed to consider the constraints of these commercial devices. [PERSON] _et al._[8] studied the feasibility of performing the evaluation of new multimedia proposals in large WSN testbeds available for research usage. They concluded that, despite the existence of powerful hardware platforms for multimedia applications, there has been little work yet to integrate them into testbeds. Consequently, simulations are the most cost-effective solution for evaluating WMSN proposals. Some researches focused on comparing the performance of data-intensive WMSN applications using different MAC and network protocols for diverse layouts. [PERSON] _et al._[9] compared the performance obtained in WMSN by using two well-known WSN MAC protocols, S-MAC and 802.15.4, and two routing protocols, Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing and its extension Ad hoc On-demand Multipath Distance Vector (AOMDV) routing. They remarked on the importance of optimizing the network layer protocols. In addition, their simulation results showed a better performance of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard in terms of network lifetime, which is supported by the large number of WMSN proposals based on this standard. [PERSON] _et al._[10] studied this standard in one-hop data-intensive networks with star topology. They simulated a video surveillance system by continuously transmitting images to a sink node. Among other outcomes, their study determined that the Packet Error Rate for this kind of traffic, where packets have the maximum size allowed by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, presents a significant increase as the network grows in comparison with typical WSNs with scalar sensors and short packets. In the same line, [PERSON] _et al._[11] performed a similar research in ZigBee networks that showed the difficulties in transmitting images over multi-hop networks. Although they only compared one-hop and two-hop schemes, they observed an important decrease in the percentage of recoverable images at the receiver for the two-hop scenario (from 2.6% to 20.5% using JPEG images, while for JPEG 2000 images the tests for the two-hop scenario could not completed due to interferences from other nodes). There are other studies that focus on optimizing wireless performance communication in WMSNs in different ways.