Experimental evaluation of the waspmote platform power consumption targeting ambient sensing

Significant advances in various Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) domains during the last years have highlighted the trend of utilizing respective implementations in increasingly demanding applications. Towards such objective, extreme energy limitation comprises probably the most notorious challenge engineers must tackle. In that respect, optimal energy management emerges as critical objective. However, in order to have a significant impact, all relative research and techniques require in-depth knowledge and detailed analysis of power consumption characteristics of real platforms. Driven by such objectives and needs this paper offers multifaceted contributions. On one hand, a procedure is preceded regarding valid power consumption measurements with respect to critical parameters. On the other hand, a proposed procedure is applied in a widely known and utilized WSN platform revealing valuable insight in significant power consumption factors, components and dependencies. Finally, the acquired knowledge is formulated into a model able to be used in real scenarios assisting to achieve optimal power consumption.