ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a review of advances on optimal resource allocation for video communications over some major distributed systems including peer to peer streaming systems, wireless ad hoc networks, and wireless visual sensor network (WVSN). It provides a case study on network lifetime maximization for WVSNs, the system models, the problem formulation, the distributed solution, and the simulation results. The chapter discusses the state of the art of optimal resource allocation for video communications over distributed systems. It examines a distributed algorithm to optimize the resources at each sensor to maximize the network lifetime of the wireless sensor network. The optimization problem is formulated to minimize the expected distortion of the multiple description coding (MDC) video by selecting the optimal sender and the optimal path from the sender to the receiver for each MDC description. Optimal resource allocation can greatly improve the performance for video communications over distributed systems.