Improvements in nanotechnology have introduced contemporary sensory devices that are capable of gathering multimedia data in form of images, audio and video. Wireless multimedia sensor networks handles such type of heterogeneous traffic. Since these networks are an emergent of wireless sensor networks, they inherit constraints that exist in these traditional networks. This paper is a survey of characteristics and requirements of wireless multimedia sensor networks and approaches to mitigating existing challenges in these networks. Further presents a review of recent research on multipath routing protocols and multi-channel media access protocols that offer quality of service assurances in handling multimedia data. The survey shows that there still exist bottlenecks in current routing solutions when applied to wireless multimedia sensor networks due to the nature of traffic involved as well as inherent characteristics, requirements and constraints. The findings are useful in the discovery of solutions to the challenges and issues. The authors further suggest approaches and plausible solutions to the problems in order to assist in the development of protocols that achieve quality of service in wireless multimedia sensor networks.

纳米技术的进步已经引入了当代的传感设备，能够以图像，音频和视频的形式收集多媒体数据。无线多媒体传感器网络处理这种类型的异构流量。由于这些网络是无线传感器网络的出现，因此它们继承了这些传统网络中存在的约束。本文对无线多媒体传感器网络的特征和要求以及缓解这些网络中现有挑战的方法进行了调查。进一步介绍了对多路径路由协议和多通道媒体访问协议的最新研究的综述，这些协议为处理多媒体数据提供了服务质量保证。调查显示，由于涉及的流量性质以及固有的特性，要求和约束，在应用于无线多媒体传感器网络时，当前的路由解决方案仍然存在瓶颈。这些发现对于发现挑战和问题的解决方案很有用。作者进一步提出了解决这些问题的方法和可行的解决方案，以帮助开发实现无线多媒体传感器网络中服务质量的协议。