Measuring the node energy consumption in a USB based WSN testbed

Energy consumption is one of the critical concerns in sensor networks. In particular, there is substantial interest to investigate the distribution of the energy consumption among different nodes depending on the protocol stack applied for specific traffic characteristics. Unfortunately, experimental investigations to this point are rather difficult, as means for cheap, easy to deploy, while precise estimation of actual energy consumption are not really available. As a solution we developed an affordable and precise circuit that measures the energy consumption in situ. It delivers the result to the sensor node, enabling nodes to take their remaining energy into account. Furthermore, it is to some extent independent from the node type and the testbed type.