—This paper addresses the issue of low-power posture and gesture recognition in indoor or outdoor environments without any additional equipment. For applications based on predefined postures such as environment control and physical rehabilitation, we show that low cost and fully distributed solutions, that minimize radio communications, can be efficiently implemented. Considering that radio links provide distance information, we also demonstrate that the matrix of estimated internode distances offers complementary information that allows for the reduction of communication load. Our results are based on a simulator that can handle various measured input data, different algorithms and various noise models. Simulation results are useful and used for the development of real-life prototype.