A Survey of Image Security in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are increasingly gaining attention. In recent years, a great deal of monitoring, control and tracking applications have been designed for different scenarios. For such networks, camera-enabled sensors can retrieve visual data from a monitored field, providing valuable information for many applications. In general, those networks have resource constraints of processing, memory, energy and transmission bandwidth, imposing many design challenges. Nevertheless, a group of applications may also have security requirements, which bring additional complexity to be handled. Most traditional security mechanisms for popular networks, like the Internet, are not suitable for wireless sensor networks, demanding proper investigation in this area. In this paper, we survey recent developments in encryption and privacy in wireless sensor networks deployed for transmissions of image snapshots, reviewing innovative approaches to provide different levels of security. Promising research directions are also discussed.