Activity Profiling and Power Estimation for Embedded Wireless Sensor Node Design

The lifetime of a wireless sensor node is determined by the energy required to complete specific tasks defined by network application. To estimate the energy of a sensor node for specific application, it is required to profile its activity for a given application scenario. The paper presents an analytical approach to wireless sensor node activity profiling, which enables a block-level extraction of activity profiles. The activity profiling is used for the energy estimation of an embedded sensor node micro controller. The results of activity profiling are applied to evaluate the proposed power saving strategies.