A methodology for power consumption evaluation of wireless sensor networks

Energy consumption is one of the most constraining requirements for the design and implementation of wireless sensor networks. Simulation tools allow one to significantly decrease the effort and time spent to choose the right solution. Existing simulators provide varying degrees of analysis for communication, application and energy domains. However, they do not provide enough flexibility to estimate the consumed power for a wide range of wireless sensor network (WSN) hardware (HW) platforms. In this paper we present a flexible and extensible simulation framework to estimate power consumption of sensor network applications for arbitrary HW platforms. This framework allows designers of sensor networks to estimate power consumption of the explored HW platform which permits the selection of an optimal HW solution and software (SW) implementation for the desired projects.