Most wireless sensor networks operate with very limited energy sources-their
batteries, and hence their usefulness in real life applications is severely
constrained. The challenging issues are how to optimize the use of their energy
or to harvest their own energy in order to lengthen their lives for wider
classes of application. Tackling these important issues requires a robust
architecture that takes into account the energy consumption level of functional
constituents and their interdependency. Without such architecture, it would be
difficult to formulate and optimize the overall energy consumption of a
wireless sensor network. Unlike most current researches that focus on a single
energy constituent of WSNs independent from and regardless of other
constituents, this paper presents an Energy Driven Architecture (EDA) as a new
architecture and indicates a novel approach for minimising the total energy
consumption of a WS