In battery-aware design, knowledge of the interaction between the duty cycle and battery performance is used to provide improvements in battery life beyond those achievable through low-power design alone. To that end, this study examined experimentally the influence of wireless sensing duty cycles on battery performance and capacity for small autonomous sensing nodes. A simple model of the physical processes that control battery behavior was used to understand and quantitatively describe our observations. The model was found to accurately describe and predict battery rate-capacity and recovery effects for a range of duty cycles. In particular, battery life was found to be a strong, predictable function of key operating parameters including the peak current, standby current, pulse length, and length of the standby period. The results and methods from this study help to enable battery-aware design by making it possible to assess the suitability of batteries for a variety of autonomous sensing applications based on their duty cycle requirements. (C) The Author(s) 2015. Published by ECS. All rights reserved.