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INTRODUCTION
The current ultra modern technologies are focusing on automation and miniaturization. The decreasing computing device size, increased connectivity and enhanced interaction with the physical world have characterized computing history. Recently, the popularity of small computing devices, such as hand held computers and cell phones; rapidly flourishing internet group and the diminishing size and cost of sensors and especially transistors have accelerated these strengths. The emergence of small computing elements, with sporadic connectivity and increased interaction with the environment, provides enriched opportunities to reshape interactions between people and computers and spur ubiquitous computing researches. Smart dust is tiny electronic devices designed to capture mountains of information about their surroundings while literally floating on air. Nowadays, sensors, computers and communicators are shrinking down to ridiculously small sizes. If all of these are packed into a single tiny device, it can open up new dimensions in the field of communications.

The MICA2 Mote uses 2 AA batteries to provide power to the CPU/radio for up to a year.

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The idea behind 'smart dust' is to pack sophisticated sensors, tiny computers and wireless communicators in to a cubic-millimeter mote to form the basis of integrated, massively distributed sensor networks. They will be light enough to remain suspended in air for hours. As the motes drift on wind, they can monitor the environment for light, sound, temperature, chemical composition and a wide range of other information, and beam that data back to the base station, miles away. These Smart Dust elements are also known as motes. This concept is also called wireless sensing networks. At one point, just about every issue of Popular Science, Discover and Wired today contains a blurb about some new application of the mote idea. For example, the military plans to use them to gather information on battlefields, and engineers plan to mix them into concrete and use them to internally monitor the health of buildings and bridges. There are thousands of different ways that motes might be used, and as people get familiar with the concept they come up with even more. It is a completely new paradigm for distributed sensing and it is opening up a fascinating new way to look at computers.

HISTORY
Smart dust was conceived in 1998 by Dr. Kris Pister of the UC Berkeley. He set out to build a device with a sensor, communication device and small computer integrated into a single package. The defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded the project, setting as a goal the demonstration that a complete sensor system can be integrated into a cubic millimeter package. In the early stages of the project the team gained experienced by building relatively large motes using components available off the shelf. One such mote is named RF mote has sensors for temperature, humidity, light intensity, barometric pressure, tilt and vibration, and magnetic field, and was capable of communicating distances of about 60 feet using radio frequency communication.

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HOW IT WORKS
The Basic Idea
The "mote" concept creates a new way of thinking about computers, but the basic idea is pretty simple:

The core of a mote is a small, low-cost, low-power computer. The computer monitors one or more sensors. It is easy to imagine all sorts of sensors, including sensors for temperature, light, sound, position, acceleration, vibration, stress, weight, pressure, humidity, etc. Not all mote applications require sensors, but sensing applications are very common. The computer connects to the outside world with a radio link. The most common radio links allow a mote to transmit at a distance of something like 10 to 200 feet (3 to 61 meters). Power consumption, size and cost are the barriers to longer distances. Since a fundamental concept with motes is tiny size (and associated tiny cost), small and low-power radios are normal

Motes can either run off of batteries, or they can tap into the power grid in certain applications. As motes shrink in size and power consumption, it is possible to imagine solar power or even something exotic like vibration power to keep them running. All of these parts are packaged together in the smallest container possible. In the future, people imagine shrinking motes to fit into something just a few millimeters on a side. It is more common for motes today, including batteries and antenna, to be the size of a stack of five or six quarters, or the size of a pack of cigarettes. The battery is usually the biggest part of the package right now. Current motes, in bulk, might cost something on the order of $25, but prices are falling. It is hard to imagine something as small and innocuous as a mote sparking a revolution, but that's exactly what they have done.
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Major Components And Requirements

Smart Dust requires both evolutionary and revolutionary advances in miniaturization, integration, and energy management. Designers can use microelectro-mechanical systems to build small sensors, optical communication components, and power supplies, whereas microelectronics provides increasing functionality in smaller areas, with lower energy consumption. The power system consists of a thick-film battery, a solar cell with a charge-integrating capacitor for periods of darkness, or both. Depending on its objective, the design integrates various sensors, including light, temperature, vibration, magnetic field, acoustic, and wind shear, onto the mote. An integrated circuit provides sensor-signal processing, communication, control, data storage, and energy management. A photodiode allows optical data reception. There are presently two transmission schemes: passive transmission using a corner-cube retro reflector and active transmission using a laser diode and steer able mirrors. The mote's minuscule size makes energy management a key component. The integrated circuit will contain sensor signal conditioning circuits, a temperature sensor, and A/D converter, microprocessor, SRAM, communications circuits, and power control circuits. The IC, together with the sensors, will operate from a power source integrated with the platform. The MEMS industry has major markets in automotive pressure sensors and accelerometers, medical sensors, and process control sensors. Recent advances in technology have put many of these sensor processes on exponentially decreasing size, power, and cost curves. In addition, variations of MEMS sensor technology are used to build micro motors.

The MICA2DOT mote, typically powered by a circular button battery, is not much bigger than a quarter.

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Working of Smart Dust

The smart dust mote is run by a microcontroller that not only determines the task performed by the mote, but consists of the power to the various components of the system to conserve energy. Periodically the micro controller gets a reading from one of the sensors, which measure one of a number of physical or chemical stimuli such as temperature, ambient light, vibration, acceleration, or air pressure, process the data, and store it in memory. It also turns on optical receiver to see if anyone is trying to communicate with it. This communication may include new programs or messages from other motes. In response to a message or upon its own initiative, the microcontroller will use the corner cube retro reflector or laser to transmit sensor data or a message to a base station or another mote. The primary constraint in the design of the Smart Dust motes is volume, which in turn puts a severe constraint on energy since we do not have much room for batteries or large solar cells. Thus, the motes must operate efficiently and conserve energy whenever possible. Most of the time, the majority of the mote is powered off with only a clock and a few timers running. When a timer expires, it powers up a part of the mote to carry out a job, then powers off. A few of the timers control the sensors that measure one of a number of physical or chemical stimuli such as temperature, ambient light, vibration, acceleration, or air pressure. When one of these timers expires, it powers up the corresponding sensor, takes a sample, and converts it to a digital word. If the data is interesting, it may either be stored directly in the SRAM or the microcontroller is powered up to perform more complex operations with it. When this task is complete, everything is again powered down and the timer begins counting again.

Brief description of the operation of the mote:

The Smart Dust mote is run by a microcontroller that not only determines the tasks performed by the mote, but controls power to the various components of the system to conserve energy. Periodically the microcontroller gets a reading from one of the sensors, which measure one of a number of physical or chemical stimuli such as temperature, ambient light, vibration, acceleration, or air pressure, processes the data, and stores it in memory. It also occasionally turns on the optical receiver to see if anyone is trying to communicate with it. This communication may include new programs or messages from other motes. In response to a message or upon its own initiative the microcontroller will use the corner cube retroreflector or laser to transmit sensor data or a message to a base station or another mote.

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Longer description of the operation of the mote:

The primary constraint in the design of the Smart Dust motes is volume, which in turn puts a severe constraint on energy since we do not have much room for batteries or large solar cells. Thus, the motes must operate efficiently and conserve energy whenever possible. Most of the time, the majority of the mote is powered off with only a clock and a few timers running. When a timer expires, it powers up a part of the mote to carry out a job, then powers off. A few of the timers control the sensors that measure one of a number of physical or chemical stimuli such as temperature, ambient light, vibration, acceleration, or air pressure. When one of these timers expires, it powers up the corresponding sensor, takes a sample, and converts it to a digital word. If the data is interesting, it may either be stored directly in the SRAM or the microcontroller is powered up to perform more complex operations with it. When this task is complete, everything is again powered down and the timer begins counting again.

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Another timer controls the receiver. When that timer expires, the receiver powers up and looks for an incoming packet. If it doesn't see one after a certain length of time, it is powered down again. The mote can receive several types of packets, including ones that are new program code that is stored in the program memory. This allows the user to change the behavior of the mote remotely. Packets may also include messages from the base station or other motes. When one of these is received, the microcontroller is powered up and used to interpret the contents of the message. The message may tell the mote to do something in particular, or it may be a message that is just being passed from one mote to another on its way to a particular destination. In response to a message or to another timer expiring, the microcontroller will assemble a packet containing sensor data or a message and transmit it using either the corner cube retroreflector or the laser diode, depending on which it has. The corner cube retroreflector transmits information just by moving a mirror and thus changing the reflection of a laser beam from the base station. This technique is substantially more energy efficient than actually generating some radiation. With the laser diode and a set of beam scanning mirrors, we can transmit data in any direction desired, allowing the mote to communicate with other Smart Dust motes.

HOW IT WORKS
Each tiny device will feature power, communications, sensing and computer systems feeding into a secure, self-configuring network that can pass information locally using low-powered radios. For longer-distance transmissions to command centers, satellite communications may be used. The system is run by a microcontroller that dictates the tasks performed and controls power to the various components of the system to conserve energy a primary concern because the system can house only a very small battery... From time to time, the microcontroller will receive a reading from one of the sensors, process the data and store it in its memory. It also will occasionally turn on its communications device to transmit data to a base station or another sensor system, or to see if the system has received messages from other sensors in the network... Because of the sensors size and low cost, the military could use them in a wide variety of missions, including the surveillance of borders, underground facilities, oil pipelines or other important resources... They also could be dropped behind enemy lines to monitor adversaries and equipment. For instance, the sensors can log and report the speed and direction of vehicles, revealing enemy troop movements to U.S. troops miles away.

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The sensor systems were tested by the military during an early operational test at Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base, Calif., in March 2001. During the test, several sensors were successfully dropped from an unmanned aerial vehicle flying 30 miles per hour at an altitude of 150 feet.
Once on the ground, the systems became synchronized and were able to detect the speed and direction of several passing vehicles, including Humvees, light armored vehicles and trucks.

GOAL
The goal of the Smart Dust project is to build a self-contained, millimeter-scale sensing and communication platform for a massively distributed sensor network. This device will be around the size of a grain of sand and will contain sensors, computational ability, bi-directional wireless communications, and a power supply, while being inexpensive enough to deploy by the hundreds. The science and engineering goal of the project is to build a complete, complex system in a tiny volume using state-of-the art technologies (as opposed to futuristic technologies), which will require evolutionary and revolutionary advances in integration, miniaturization, and energy management. We forsee many applications for this technology: Weather/seismological monitoring on Mars Internal spacecraft monitoring Land/space comm. Networks Chemical/biological sensors Weapons stockpile monitoring Defense-related sensor networks Inventory Control Product quality monitoring Smart office spaces Sports - sailing, balls

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A Typical Mote
MICA mote is a commercially available product that has been used widely by researchers and developers. It has all of the typical features of a mote and therefore can help you understand what this technology makes possible today. MICA motes are available to the general public through a company called Crossbow. These motes come in two form factors:

"Spec" sitting on top of the previous generation of UC Berkeley Motes, the Mica node. The size reduction is amazing.

Rectangular, measuring 2.25 x 1.25 by 0.25 inches (5.7 x 3.18 x.64 centimeters), it is sized to fit on top of two AA batteries that provide it with power. Circular, measuring 1.0 by 0.25 inches (2.5 x .64 centimeters), it is sized to fit on top of a 3 volt button cell battery.

The MICA mote uses an Atmel ATega 128L processor running at 4 megahertz. The 128L is an 8-bit microcontroller that has 128 kilobytes of onboard flash memory to store the mote's program. This CPU is about as powerful as the 8088 CPU found in the original IBM PC (circa 1982). The big difference is that the ATmega consumes only 8 milliamps when it is running, and only 15 microamps in sleep mode. This low power consumption allows a MICA mote to run for more than a year with two AA batteries. A typical AA battery can produce about 1,000 milliamphours. At 8 milliamps, the ATmega would operate for about 120 hours if it operated constantly. However, the programmer will typically write his/her code so that the CPU is asleep much of the time, allowing it to extend battery life considerably. For example, the mote might sleep for 10 seconds, wake up and check status for a few microseconds, and then go back to sleep.

MICA motes come with 512 kilobytes of flash memory to hold data. They also have a 10-bit A/D converter so that sensor data can be digitized. Separate sensors

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on a daughter card can connect to the mote. Sensors available include temperature, acceleration, light, sound and magnetic. Advanced sensors for things like GPS signals are under development. The final component of a MICA mote is the radio. It has a range of several hundred feet and can transmit approximately 40,000 bits per second. When it is off, the radio consumes less than one microamp. When receiving data, it consumes 10 milliamps. When transmitting, it consumes 25 milliamps. Conserving radio power is key to long battery life.

Broad view of "Spec" sitting on top of the previous generation of UC Berkeley Motes, the Mica node. "Spec" is the tiny little square on top of the raised bit in the middle.

All of these hardware components together create a MICA mote. A programmer writes software to control the mote and make it perform a certain way. Software on MICA motes is built on an operating system called TinyOS. TinyOS is helpful because it deals with the radio and power management systems for you and makes it much easier to write software for the mote.

APPLICATIONS:

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The science/engineering goal of the Smart Dust project is to demonstrate that a complete sensor/communication system can be integrated into a cubic millimeter package. This involves both evolutionary and revolutionary advances in miniaturization, integration, and energy management. We aren't targeting any particular sensor, in fact there is no direct funding for sensor research in the project (but we've got quite a few to choose from based on a decade or two of outstanding MEMS work at Berkeley and elsewhere). We're funded by DARPA, so we will demonstrate Smart Dust with one or more applications of military relevance. Some of them are as follows: Defense-related sensor networks o battlefield surveillance, treaty monitoring, transportation monitoring, scud hunting, ... Virtual keyboard o Glue a dust mote on each of your fingernails. Accelerometers will sense the orientation and motion of each of your fingertips, and talk to the computer in your watch. QWERTY is the first step to proving the concept, but you can imagine much more useful and creative ways to interface to your computer if it knows where your fingers are: sculpt 3D shapes in virtual clay, play the piano, gesture in sign language and have to computer translate, ... o Combined with a MEMS augmented-reality heads-up display, your entire computer I/O would be invisible to the people around you. Couple that with wireless access and you need never be bored in a meeting again! Surf the web while the boss rambles on and on. Inventory Control o The carton talks to the box, the box talks to the palette, the palette talks to the truck, and the truck talks to the warehouse, and the truck and the warehouse talk to the internet. Know where your products are and what shape they're in any time, anywhere. Sort of like FedEx tracking on steroids for all products in your production stream from raw materials to delivered goods. Product quality monitoring o temperature, humidity monitoring of meat, produce, dairy products Mom, don't buy those Frosted Sugar Bombs, they sat in 80% humidity for two days, they won't be crunchy! o impact, vibration, temp monitoring of consumer electronics failure analysis and diagnostic information, e.g. monitoring vibration of bearings for frequency signatures indicating imminent failure (back up that hard drive now!)

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Smart office spaces o The Center for the Built Environment has fabulous plans for the office of the future in which environmental conditions are tailored to the desires of every individual. Maybe soon we'll all be wearing temperature, humidity, and environmental comfort sensors sewn into our clothes, continuously talking to our workspaces which will deliver conditions tailored to our needs. No more fighting with your office mates over the thermostat. Interfaces for the Disabled (courtesy of Bryndis Tobin) o Bryndis sent me email with the following idea: put motes "on a quadriplegic's face, to monitor blinking & facial twitches - and send them as commands to a wheelchair/computer/other device." This could be generalized to a whole family of interfaces for the disabled. Thanks Bryndis! The dark side o Yes, personal privacy is getting harder and harder to come by. Yes, you can hype Smart Dust as being great for big brother (thank you, New Scientist). Yawn. Every technology has a dark side - deal with it. [this was my original comment on "dark side" issues, but it made a lot of people think that we weren't thinking about these issues at all. Not true.] o As an engineer, or a scientist, or a hair stylist, everyone needs to evaluate what they do in terms of its positive and negative effect. If I thought that the negatives of working on this project were larger than or even comparable to the positives, I wouldn't be working on it. As it turns out, I think that the potential benefits of this technology far far outweigh the risks to personal privacy.

Environmental Impact
A lot of people seem to be worried about environmental impact. Not to worry! Even in my wildest imagination I don't think that we'll ever produce enough Smart Dust to bother anyone. If Intel stopped producing Pentium and produced only Smart Dust, and you spread them evenly around the country, you'd get around one grain-of-sand sized mote per acre per year. If by ill chance you did inhale one, it would be just like inhaling a gnat. You'd cough it up post-haste. Unpleasant, but not very likely. Consider the scale - if I make a million dust motes, they have a total volume of one liter. Throwing a liter worth of batteries into the environment is certainly not going to help it, but in the big picture it probably doesn't make it very high on the list of bad things to do to the planet.

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Typical Applications
If you survey the literature for different ways that people have thought of to use motes, you find a huge assortment of ideas. Here's a collection culled from the links at the end of the article. It is possible to think of motes as lone sensors. For example:

You could embed motes in bridges when you pour the concrete. The mote could have a sensor on it that can detect the salt concentration within the concrete. Then once a month you could drive a truck over the bridge that sends a powerful magnetic field into the bridge. The magnetic field would allow the motes, which are burried within the concrete of the bridge, to power on and transmit the salt concentration. Salt (perhaps from deicing or ocean spray) weakens concrete and corrodes the steel rebar that strengthens the concrete. Salt sensors would let bridge maintenance personnel gauge how much damage salt is doing. Other possible sensors embedded into the concrete of a bridge might detect vibration, stress, temperature swings, cracking, etc., all of which would help maintenance personnel spot problems long before they become critical. You could connect sensors to a mote that can monitor the condition of machinery -- temperature, number of revolutions, oil level, etc. and log it in the mote's memory. Then, when a truck drives by, the mote could transmit all the logged data. This would allow detailed maintenance records to be kept on machinery (for example, in an oil field), without maintenance personnel having to go measure all of those parameters themselves. You could attach motes to the water meters or power meters in a neighborhood. The motes would log power and water consumption for a customer. When a truck drives by, the motes get a signal from the truck and they send their data. This would allow a person to read all the meters in a neighborhood very easily, simply by driving down the street.

All of these ideas are good; some allow sensors to move into places where they have not been before (such as embedded in concrete) and others reduce the time needed to read sensors individually. However, much of the greatest excitement about motes comes from the idea of using large numbers of motes that communicate with each other and form ad hoc networks.

Ad hoc Networks

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was among the original patrons of the mote idea. One of the initial mote ideas implemented for DARPA allows motes to sense battlefield conditions. For example, imagine that a commander wants to be able to detect truck movement in a remote area. An airplane flies over the area and scatters thousands of motes, each one equipped with a magnetometer, a vibration sensor and a GPS receiver. The battery-operated motes are dropped at a density of one every 100 feet (30 meters) or so. Each mote wakes up, senses its position and then sends out a radio signal to find its neighbors. All of the motes in the area create a giant, amorphous network that can collect data. Data funnels through the network and arrives at a collection node, which has a powerful radio able to transmit a signal many miles. When an enemy truck drives through the area, the motes that detect it transmit their location and their sensor readings. Neighboring motes pick up the transmissions and forward them to their neighbors and so on, until the signals arrive at the collection node and are transmitted to the commander. The commander can now display the data on a screen and see, in real time, the path that the truck is following through the field of motes. Then a remotely-piloted vehicle can fly over the truck, make sure it belongs to the enemy and drop a bomb to destroy it. This might seem like an awful lot of trouble to go to, until you realize the system that these motes replace. In the past, the tool a commander used to prevent truck or troop movement through a remote area has been land mines. Soldiers would lace the area with thousands of anti-truck or anti-personnel mines. Anyone moving through the area -- friend or foe -- is blown up. Another problem, of course, is that long after the conflict is over the mines are still active and deadly -- laying in wait to claim the limbs and even lives of any passerby. According to this UNICEF report, over the last 30 years, landmines have killed or maimed more than 1 million people -- many of whom are children. With motes, what is left behind after a war are tiny, completely harmless sensors. Since motes consume so little power, the batteries would last a year or two. Then, the motes would simply go silent presenting no physical threat to civilians nearby. This concept of ad hoc networks -- formed by hundreds or thousands of motes that communicate with each other and pass data along from one to another -- is extremely powerful. Here are several examples of the concept at work:

Imagine a suburban neighborhood or an apartment complex with motes that monitor the water and power meters (as described in the previous section). Since all of the meters (and motes) in a typical neighborhood are within 100 feet (30 meters) of each other, the attached motes could form an ad hoc

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network amongst themselves. At one end of the neighborhood is a supermote with a network connection or a cell-phone link. In this imagined neighborhood, someone doesn't have to drive a truck through the neighborhood each month to read the individual water or power meters -the motes pass the data along from one to another, and the super-mote transmits it. Measurement can occur hourly or daily if desired. A farmer, vineyard owner, or ecologist could equip motes with sensors that detect temperature, humidity, etc., making each mote a mini weather station. Scattered throughout a field, vineyard or forest, these motes would allow the tracking of micro-climates. A building manager could attach motes to every electrical wire throughout an office building. These motes would have induction sensors to detect power consumption on that individual wire and let the building manager see power consumption down to the individual outlet. If power consumption in the building seems high, the building manager can track it to an individual tenant. Although this would be possible to do with wires, with motes it would be far less expensive. A biologist could equip an endangered animal with a collar containing a mote that senses position, temperature, etc. As the animal moves around, the mote collects and stores data from the sensors. In the animal's environment, the biologists could place zones or strips with data collection motes. When the animal wanders into one of these zones, the mote in the collar would dump its data to the ad hoc network in the zone, which would then transmit it to the biologist. Motes placed every 100 feet on a highway and equipped with sensors to detect traffic flow could help police recognize where an accident has stopped traffic. Because no wires are needed, the cost of installation would be relatively low.

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"Spec," a single-chip mote (hiding under the white wax square), measures approximately 2mm x 2.5mm, has an AVR-like RISC core, 3K of memory, an 8-bit, on-chip ADC, an FSK radio transmitter, a Paged memory system, communication protocol accelerators, register windows, and much, much more.

It is able to scatter hundreds of tiny sensors around a building to monitor temperature or humidity. Or deploying, like pixie dust, a network of minuscule, remote sensor chips to track enemy movements in a military operation. "Smart dust" devices are tiny wireless micro-electromechanical sensors (MEMS) that can detect everything from light to vibrations. Thanks to recent breakthroughs in silicon and fabrication techniques, these "motes" could eventually be the size of a grain of sand, though each would contain sensors, computing circuits, bidirectional wireless communications technology and a power supply. Motes would gather scads of data, run computations and communicate that information using two-way band radio between motes at distances approaching 1,000 feet. Potential commercial applications are varied, ranging from catching manufacturing defects by sensing out-of-range vibrations in industrial equipment to tracking patient movements in a hospital room.

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THE FUTURE
In March, 2003, researchers managed to cram all of the parts needed for a mote onto a single chip less than 3 millimeters on each side. The total size is about 5 square millimeters, meaning that you could fit more than a dozen of these chips onto a penny. The chip contains all of the components found in a mote: a CPU, memory, an A/D converter for reading sensor data and a radio transmitter. To complete the package you attach the sensor(s), a battery and an antenna. The cost of the chip will be less than a dollar when it is mass produced.

"Spec" pictured beside the tip of a ballpoint pen.