Wireless sensor networks are attractive largely because they need no wired infrastructure. But precisely this feature makes them energy constrained, and the consequences of this hard energy constraint are the overall topic of this thesis. We are in particular concerned with principles for energy efficient wireless communication and the energy-wise trade-off between sensing and radio communication. Radio transmission between sensors incurs both a fixed energy cost from radio circuit processing, and a variable energy cost related to the level of radiated energy. We here find that transmission techniques that are otherwise considered efficient consumes too much processing energy. Currently available sensor node radios typically have a maximum output power that is too limited to benefit from transmission-efficient, but processing-intensive, techniques. Our results provide new design guidelines for the radio output power. With increasing transmission energy -- with increasing distance -- the considered techniques should be applied in the following order: output power control, polarisation receiver diversity, error correcting codes, multi-hop communication, and cooperative multiple-input multiple-output transmissions. To assess the measurement capability of the network as a whole, and to facilitate a study of the sensing-communication trade-off, we devise a new metric: the network measurement capacity. It is based on the number of different measurement sequences that a network can provide, and is hence a measure of the network's readiness to meet a large number of possible events. Optimised multi-hop routing under this metric reveals that the energy consumed for sensing has decisive impact on the best multi-hop routes. We also find support for the use of hierarchical heterogeneous network structures. Model parameter uncertainties have large impact on our results and we use probability theory as logic to include them consistently. Our analysis shows that common assumptions can give misleading results, and our analysis of radio channel measurements confirms the inadequacy of the Rayleigh fading channel model. / wisenet