An environment for runtime power monitoring of wireless sensor network platforms

Wireless sensor networks emerged as a key technology for prolonged, unsupervised monitoring in a wide spectrum of applications, from biological and environmental to civil and military. The sensor networks should operate autonomously for a long period of time under stringent resource and energy constraints. Energy conservation and power-awareness have become a focus of a number of research efforts, as sensor network nodes must operate on batteries or use energy extracted from the environment, such as solar energy or vibrations. Runtime power measurements and characterization of real existing systems are crucial for studies that target power optimizations, including techniques for dynamic adaptation based on the current energy status. This paper introduces an environment for unobtrusive real-time power monitoring that could be used for a number of wireless sensor platforms. We describe our methodology for calibration and validation of the environment and give empirical data for the Telos wireless sensor platform when it runs a subset of representative applications.

I. Introduction

Recent technology advances in sensors, microprocessors, and wireless communications have enabled design and proliferation of ad-hoc wireless sensor networks. These networks consist of a large number of inexpensive and miniature sensors that can monitor and control environments without human intervention for a long period of time. Current research efforts aim at developing of new sensing devices, architectures for sensor platforms [1] [2], wireless communication protocols [3] [4] [5], as well as system support for design and evaluation of sensor networks [6] [7].