1. A device comprising: a sensor configured to output sensor data corresponding to at least one physical property; a transmitter; one or more processing unit(s) coupled to the sensor and the transmitter; one or more computer storage media; and one or more program modules stored on the one or more computer storage media and executable by the one or more processing unit(s) to: receive a plurality of samples of the sensor data from the sensor; determine a plurality of bits, in which each bit has a substantially equal probability of being determined as a 0 bit or of being determined as a 1 bit; estimate a sparsity value of the sensor data based at least in part on the sequence of bits and the sensor data; compress the received samples of the sensor data based at least in part on the determined sparsity value to provide compressed data; and transmit the compressed data via the transmitter to a receiver.