New Architecture for Efficient Data Sampling in Wireless Sensor Network Devices

When discussing powering wireless sensor network nodes, there are a few major energy consumers: communications, microcontroller and the sensor. We propose a wireless sensor network platform architecture minimizing the energy consumption of sensing. The architecture proposed herein is based on a reactive approach to sensing. A number of possible hardware approaches are evaluated and compared. This comparison indicates that analog storage between the sensing element and the sensor electronics can be a feasible method for reducing the energy consumption of the system. Keywords-low power WSN sensing; WSN node architecture; wireless sensor network node.