WiseNET: an ultralow-power wireless sensor network solution

A wireless sensor network consists of many energy-autonomous microsensors distributed throughout an area of interest. Each node monitors its local environment, locally processing and storing the collected data so that other nodes can use it. To optimize power consumption, the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology has developed WiseNET, an ultralow-power platform for the implementation of wireless sensor networks that achieves low-power operation through a careful codesign approach. The WiseNET platform uses a codesign approach that combines a dedicated duty-cycled radio with WiseMAC, a low-power media access control protocol, and a complex system-on-chip sensor node to exploit the intimate relationship between MAC-layer performance and radio transceiver parameters. The WiseNET solution consumes about 100 times less power than comparable solutions.