Energy Consumption of the Mobile Wireless Sensor Network's Node with Controlled Mobility

One of the recent tendencies for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) that significantly increases their performance and functionality is the utilization of mobile nodes. The paper discusses in detail the structure of a WSN node with controlled mobility and presents the energy consumption measurement results for the real-life mobile WSN node platform in different operation modes. As the presented results reveal, besides the actual energy consumption by the radio during communication or by the motors during movement, one must also account the consumption by the voltage conversion and stabilization circuits and by the sensors.