Benchmarking performance and energy efficiency of microprocessors for wireless sensor network applications

Energy efficiency is one of the most important design requirements in wireless sensor networks (WSN). In this paper, three performed benchmarks compared code size and execution speed of ARM Cortex-M series processors with processors which are commonly used in WSN. In addition, power consumption is taken into account in order to determine energy efficiency of tested processors. Results show that recently introduced ARM Cortex-M series processors are best choice for energy efficient WSN nodes according to all design criteria: power consumption, execution speed and code size.