Modelling the power cost of security in Wireless Sensor Networks : The case of 802.15.4

Pervasive applications and in particular Wireless Sensors Networks have very strict requirements in terms of power consumption. It is well known that radio activity is very expensive in terms of energy; we show here that intensive processing activities (as security) represent a major contribution to power budget. In this paper we extend our methodology for analyzing the impact of security related operations on power consumption and optimizing it. The analysis is based on experimental data and was validated with measurements on a real platform.