WISDOM — A wireless debugging and power measurement system for field tests and device observation in WSN

Energy consumption is a major concern in battery powered wireless sensor networks (WSN). For that reason there is a strong demand for the evaluation of power consumption of nodes in a wireless sensor network during its development phase. This evaluation can be done in early design stages by using simulations and models, but there is also the need for an evaluation in a real setup. This paper presents the WISDOM platform, which is a sensor node by itself, equipped with a 24-bit ADC converter that is used to measure power consumption of sensor nodes in a WSN. Monitored measurements can be transmitted wireless to a sink. In that way a power consumption profile can be created for a large scale WSN under realistic load conditions. The WISDOM platform provides a very high dynamic range for power metering, which is important for monitoring sensor nodes that operate in deep sleep modes as well as in high power transmission modes.