In this paper, the design and implementation of a novel on-board wireless passive sensing system for impact detection of composite airframe is presented for the first time. Several modules, including filtering, impact detection, local processing and wireless transmission are designed and evaluated for detecting rare, random and transitory impact events. An event-triggered mechanism with high responsiveness is adopted to reduce the system power dissipation and to maintain the detection effectiveness. This design allows the system to be adaptive, energy-efficient and highly responsive to impacts. The whole system was implemented in an experimental study, and the effectiveness was evaluated and illustrated. The system was woken up by impact events in around 12 µs, and the impact data were recorded at 200 kHz (up to 5.33 MHz). This work provides a guideline for low-power, high-responsiveness passive on-board sensing system design. This system can also be adapted to other sensing applications in aerospace engineering.