This paper describes a study of energy consumption of ZigBee and Wi-Fi wireless communication modules applied in low power physiological monitoring sensor node. This article aims to evaluate the lifetime and power consumption of sensor nodes with data-intensive transmission for long periods of transmission. Sensor nodes are developed using low-power electronic devices with electrocardiographic (ECG), temperature and pulse arterial sensor. The results show, ZigBee technology has a longer lifetime than Wi-Fi for low data rate and longer periods of transmission. Nevertheless, for hundreds transmission bytes, Wi-Fi technology shows a power consumption comparable to ZigBee technology.