Abstract
Real-world wireless sensing applications pose a number of great challenges on low-power hardware/software platform designs, including a wide range of size, cost, power consumption, connectivity, performance, and flexibility requirements. Based on a classification of sensing functions, detection methods, timeliness of data, and characteristics of power supply, the platform may need to incorporate different features in order to operate in a low-power, energy-efficient manner. The design issues are highlighted in the context of a number of sensing systems ranging from high-performance, high-precision data acquisition wireless sensor node for civil engineering and an ultra-compact wireless sensor node for infant monitoring to a laser-based breast cancer detector. ©2006 IEEE.