  Many future wireless sensor networks and the Internet of Things are expected
to follow a software defined paradigm, where protocol parameters and behaviors
will be dynamically tuned as a function of the signal statistics. New protocols
will be then injected as a software as certain events occur. For instance, new
data compressors could be (re)programmed on-the-fly as the monitored signal
type or its statistical properties change. We consider a lossy compression
scenario, where the application tolerates some distortion of the gathered
signal in return for improved energy efficiency. To reap the full benefits of
this paradigm, we discuss an automatic sensor profiling approach where the
signal class, and in particular the corresponding rate-distortion curve, is
automatically assessed using machine learning tools (namely, support vector
machines and neural networks). We show that this curve can be reliably
estimated on-the-fly through the computation of a small number (from ten to
twenty) of statistical features on time windows of a few hundreds samples.
