## 1 Introduction  
Wireless multimedia sensor networks are a special type of wireless sensor networks that are able to manage multimedia content. According to [1], the development of these networks fosters the evolution of new applications, such as electronic surveillance, traffic monitoring and guidance, healthcare, assistance for elderly people and environmental monitoring. The research community has studied a wide range of aspects of these type of networks, as summarized in the surveys [1; 2; 3; 4]. Security in residential and public areas is a matter of great importance for many people. For that reason, some Internet providers are offering surveillance systems as a value-added service. As many other fields in technology, surveillance systems have recently undergone a revolution, shifting from CCTVs to IP-based cameras, as the latter offer clear advantages to their users. Not only their cost is more competitive, but IP-based cameras are also able to naturally connect to the widely-deployed Internet. Thus, IP-based cameras will constitute the key component in surveillance systems that are connected to the Internet, setting up a wireless surveillance sensor network (WSSN). The main requirements of a WSSN combine the requirements from wireless sensor networks and real-time applications, the high bandwidth demand and low power consumption standing out. The network must provide for surveillance purposes a high bandwidth, as video quality must be high enough to distinguish even patterns that may indicate intrusion or attack attempts. The low power consumption constraint comes from the essence of wireless sensor networks, as sensors must be as autonomous as possible. WSSNs make use of radio resources in unlicensed frequency bands, which currently are highly populated with a wide range of devices using heterogeneous technologies. Moreover, the requirements in terms of bandwidth are also increasing. All of these motives as a whole make it harder for wireless communication networks to meet user demands regarding quality of service. For all of these reasons, we can claim that there is an actual need for a more efficient management of the radio spectrum. Many solutions have been proposed for the problem of radio spectrum scarcity from different points of view. Some works focus on improving spectral efficiency [5] and error detection and correction algorithms [6] or on the design of new antennas for taking better advantage from multipath propagation for a more efficient signal reception (MIMO) [7]. Some other works propose, for a certain wireless technology, device coordination mechanisms for those devices that share the same frequency band, so that interferences are minimized and throughput is increased. For data services, the effect of interferences on the throughput perceived by the user is of paramount significance, as throughput ranges from zero until its maximum value depending on the \(SINR\) (signal-to-interference plus noise ratio; determines the relation between the power of the desired signal (the video we want to receive) and all of the undesired signals that are received (other video flows and noise)) value [8]. This last problem is commonly known as the frequency assignment problem (FAP) [9]. Frequency assignment has been approached in a centralized manner from the point of view of optimization [10] and from an engineering point of view with distributed heuristics, LCCS (least congested channel search) [11] being one of the most commonly-used techniques. Therefore, to deploy the required bandwidth to IP-based cameras in a WSSN environment, frequency assignment arises as a paramount problem. In this work, we address the frequency (channel) assignment problem in WSSNs from the perspective of automated negotiation techniques. Automated negotiation has proven to be valuable to support the decision-making process in scenarios where it is necessary to find an agreement quickly and with conflicting interests involved [12].