There are several important consequences of the design
space as discussed above. Clearly, a single hardware platform
will most likely not be sufficient to support the wide
range of possible applications. In order to avoid the development
of application-specific hardware, it would be desirable,
however, to have available a (small) set of platforms
with different capabilities that cover the design space. A
modular approach, where the individual components of a
sensor node can be easily exchanged, might help to partially
overcome this difficulty. Principles and tools for selecting
suitable hardware components for particular applications
would also be desirable.
As far as software is concerned, the situation becomes
even more complex. As with hardware, one could try to
cover the design space with a (larger) set of different protocols,
algorithms, and basic services. However, a system developer
would then still be faced with the complexity of the