1. A method comprising: detecting communication capabilities of a communications channel between a sensor node and a processing subsystem, the communications channel carrying a sensor data stream from the sensor node to the processing subsystem, the sensor node being located at a different location than the processing subsystem; and adjusting allocation of functionality between the sensor node and the processing subsystem based on the detected communication capabilities, wherein the adjusting the allocation of functionality causes one of the sensor node or the processing subsystem to perform a process on sensor data and causes the other of the sensor node or the processing subsystem to not perform the process on the sensor data, thereby changing characteristics of the sensor data communicated in the sensor data stream.