Awareness of the characteristics of a sensor network’s
underlying hardware is at the crux of the design of energy efficient
communication protocols. Aiming at a systematic approach to
choose protocols based on specific sensors or to devise protocols
that adapt to sensor characteristics, we first identify the hardware
features of various sensors and define a total energy consumption
model in a wireless sensor network (WSN). Secondly, we illustrate
its use by evaluating the energy cost of two communication
protocols under two different hardware assumptions. Thus, we
consider the microcontroller characteristics and a (i) hardware
and (ii) software description of the arithmetic operations. The
findings show that (a) the energy cost for a protocol varies
significantly on different sensor platforms and (b) the protocols
can be adapted to the underlying hardware for a maximum
energy efficiency. Our results for (ii) are supported with real-life
measurements using TelosB motes.