As one of the most successful applications of image analysis and understanding, face recognition has recently received significant attention, especially during the past few years. In order to construct an autonomous and robust biometric security system, this paper explores the application of face recognition technique in wireless sensor networks. Given the limited technological resources of sensor nodes, new challenges remain to be met. In this work, a facial component-based recognition mechanism is firstly applied to ensure the recognition accuracy. Secondly, in order to address the problem of resource constraints, a distributed scheme based on K-d trees is deployed for both the face image transmission and retrieval. According to the simulation results, the proposed method is capable of achieving considerable energy efficiency, while assuring the recognition accuracy.
