Abstract-A broad range of embedded networked sensor (ENS) systems for critical environmental monitoring applications now require complex, high peak power dissipating sensor devices, as well as on-demand high performance computing and high bandwidth communication. Embedded computing demands for these new platforms include support for computationally intensive image and signal processing as well as optimization and statistical computing. To meet these new requirements while maintaining critical support for low energy operation, a new multiprocessor node hardware and software architecture, Low Power Energy Aware Processing (LEAP), has been developed. This architecture integrates fine-grained energy dissipation monitoring and sophisticated power control scheduling for all subsystems including sensor subsystems. The LEAP architecture enables complex energy-aware algorithm design by providing a simple interface to control numerous platform and sensor power modes and report detailed energy usage information. This paper also describes experimental results of a new distributed node testbed based on LEAP demonstrating that by exploiting high energy efficiency components and enabling proper on-demand scheduling, the LEAP architecture meets both sensing performance and energy dissipation objectives for a broad class of applications. This testbed including the network of distributed LEAP nodes and a system producing physical, mobile events provides a development environment for LEAP-hosted algorithms. New design principles, detailed implementation, and in-network programming and remote debugging capabilities of this platform are also described. While this is the first report of the LEAP system, it has been deployed for nearly one year with 50 users developing energy aware systems.Keywords-embedded wireless networked sensor, energy-aware multprocessor platform, sensor platform hardware and software architecture