How to speed up transfer of images from client to server

Question

I am solving a problem of transferring images from a camera in a loop from a client (a robot with camera) to a server (PC).

I am trying to come up with ideas how to maximize the transfer speed so I can get the best possible FPS (that is because I want to create a live video stream out of the transferred images). Disregarding the physical limitations of WIFI stick on the robot, what would you suggest?

So far I have decided:

• to use YUV colorspace instead of RGB
• to use UDP protocol instead of TCP/IP

Is there anything else I could do to get the maximum fps possible?

Answer 1

Compress the difference between successive images. Add some checksum. Provide some way for the receiver to request full image data for the case where things get out of synch.

There are probably a host of protocols doing that already.

So, search for live video stream protocols.

Cheers & hth.,

Answer 2

This might be quite a bit of work but if your client can handle the computations in real time you could use the same method that video encoders use. Send a key frame every say 5 frames and in between only send the information that changed not the whole frame. I don't know the details of how this is done, but try Googling p-frames or video compression.