Distributed networks of thousands of collaborating microsensors promise a maintenancefree, fault-tolerant platform for gathering rich multidimensional observations of the environment. Because a microsensor node must operate for years on a tiny battery, researchers must apply innovative system-level techniques to eliminate energy inefficiencies that would have been overlooked in the past. In this article we advocate two particular enablers for energy conservation: the ability to trade off

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... ance for energy savings within the node, and collaborative processing among nodes to reduce the overall energy dissipated in the network. New levels of energy efficiency -attained through global system-level perspectives on node and network energy consumption -will enable a future where networks of hundreds, thousands, and eventually many millions of collaborating nodes are as commonplace as today's cellular phone.