  In wireless sensor networks, bandwidth is one of precious resources to
multimedia applications. To get more bandwidth, multipath routing is one
appropriate solution provided that inter-path interferences are minimized. In
this paper, we address the problem of interfering paths in the context of
wireless multimedia sensor networks and consider both intra-session as well as
inter-session interferences. Our main objective is to provide necessary
bandwidth to multimedia applications through non-interfering paths while
increasing the network lifetime. To do so, we adopt an incremental approach
where for a given session, only one path is built at once. Additional paths are
built when required, typically in case of congestion or bandwidth shortage.
Interference awareness and energy saving are achieved by switching a subset of
sensor nodes in a {\em passive state} in which they do not take part in the
routing process. Despite the routing overhead introduced by the incremental
approach we adopt, our simulations show that this can be compensated by the
overall achieved throughput and the amount of consumed energy per correctly
received packet especially for relatively long sessions such as multimedia
ones. This is mainly due to the fact that a small number of non-interfering
paths allows for better performances than a large number of interfering ones.

Networking and Internet Architecture