SMART DUST

V. Praveen chand Y8EC717 D.M.S.S.V.H COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ACHARYA NAGARJUNA UNIVERSITY, MACHILIPATNAM. laser diode and MEMS beam-steering mirror for active optical transmission, a MEMS corner-cube retroreflector for passive optical transmission, an optical receiver, signalprocessing and control circuitry, and a power source based on thick-film batteries and solar cells. The intent is that these motes will eventually become the size of a grain of sand or a dust particle, hence the name smart dust, but the technology still has a long way to go to achieve its target size. In current sensor technology, the sensors are about the size of a bottle cap or small coin. As with most electronic devices or technologies, the biggest challenges in achieving actual smart dust are the power consumption issues and making the batteries small enough. Although there is a lot of work being done on solar cells to keep the motes self-sustaining, the components are just not small enough yet to actually be considered smart dust. However, if Moores Law holds true for smart dust technology, continuous improvements will be made to the circuit design and packaging of motes that will allow them to keep consistently shrinking in size and power consumption while growing in their sensor and/or computing capabilities.Smart dust technology relies on a line-of-sight path in order for the sensor networks to operate.Given that smart dust has yet to be realized, scientists can only speculate on what the actual range of operation will be or how distance will affect performance; however, many researchers are confident that as long as line-of-sight is maintained, the motes could communicate over several kilometers.

ABSTRACT 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, which will require evolutionary and revolutionary advances in integration, miniaturization, and energy management. We foresee 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.

INTRODUCTION:

Smart dust is a theoretical concept of a tiny wireless sensor network, made up of microelectromechanical sensors (called MEMS), robots, or devices, usually referred to as motes, that have selfcontained sensing, computation, communication and power 1. According to the smart dust project design created by a team of UC Berkeley researchers 2, within each of these motes is an integrated package of MEMS sensors, a semiconductor

Smart Dust Technology: A Smart Dust mote is show in fig-1. integrated into a single package are MEMS sensors, a semiconductor laser diode and MEMS beam-steering mirror for active optical transmission, a MEMS corner-cube retroreflector for

passive optical transmission, an optical receiver, signalprocessing and control circuitry, and a powersource based on thick-film batteries and solar cells. This remarkable package has the ability to sense and communicate, and is self-powered! A major challenge is to incorporate all these functions while maintaining very low power consumption, thereby maxmizing operating life given the limited volume available for energy storage. Within the design goal of a cubic millimeter volume, using the best available battery technology, the total stored energy is on the order of 1 Joule. If this energy is consumed continuously over a day, the dust mote power consumption cannot exceed roughly 10 microwatts. The functionality envisioned for Smart Dust can be achieved only if the total power consumption of a dust mote is limited to microwatt levels, and if careful power management strategies are utilized (i.e., the various parts of the dust mote are powered on only when necessary). To enable dust motes to function over the span of days, solar cells could be employed to scavenge as much energy as possible when the sun shines (roughly 1 Joule per day) or when room lights are turned on (about 1 millijoule per day). Techniques for performing sensing and processing at low power are reasonably well understood. Developing a communications architecture for ultra-low-power represents a more critical challenge. The primary candidate communication technologies are based on radio frequency (RF) or optical transmission techniques. Each technique has its advantages and disadvantages. RF presents a problem because dust motes offer very limited space for antennas, thereby demanding extremely short-wavelength (i.e., high frequency) transmission. Communication in this regime is not currently compatible with low power operation. Furthermore, radio transceivers are relatively complex circuits, making it difficult to reduce their power consumption to the required microwatt levels. They require modulation, bandpass filtering and demodulation circuitry, and additional circuitry is required if the transmissions of a large number of dust motes are to be multiplexed using time, frequency- or code-division multiple access [6].transmission. Kahn and Pisters studies [6] have shown that when a line-of-sight path is available, well-designed freespace optical links require significantly lower energy per bit than their RF counterparts. There are several reasons for the power advantage of optical links. Optical transceivers require only simple baseband analog and digital circuitry; no modulators, active bandpass filters or demodulators are needed. The short wavelength of visible or near-infrared light (of the order of 1 micron) makes it possible for a millimeter-scale device to emit a narrow beam (i.e., high

antenna gain can be achieved). As another consequence of this short wavelength, a base-station transceiver (BTS) equipped with a compact imaging receiver can decode the simultaneous transmissions from a large number of dust motes at different locations within the receiver field of view, which is a formof space-division multiplexing. Successful decoding of these simultaneous transmissions requires that dust motes not block one anothers line of sight to the BTS. Such blockage is unlikely, in view of the dust motes small size. A second requirement for decoding of simultaneous transmission is that the images of different dust motes be formed on different pixels in the BTS imaging receiver. To get a feeling for the required receiver resolution, consider the following example. Suppose that the BTS views a 17 meter by 17 meter area containing SmartDust, and that it uses a high-speed video camera with a very modest 256 by 256 pixel imaging array. Each pixel views an area about 6.6 centimeters square. Hence, simultaneous transmissions can be decoded as long as the dust motes are separated by a distance roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes.

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Figure 2. Micro fabricated corner-cube retro reflector, consisting of three gold-coated poly silicon mirrors. The base mirror can be deflected electro statically, modulating the optical signal reflected from the device .

Another advantage of free-space optical transmission is that a special MEMS structure make it possible for dust motes to use passive optical transmission techniques, i.e., to transmit modulated optical signals without supplying any optical power. This structure is a corner-cube retroreflector, or CCR (see Figure 2). It comprises three mutually perpendicular mirrors of gold-coated polysilicon. The CCR has the property that any incident ray of light is reflected back to the source (provided that it is incident within a certain range of angles centered about the cubes body diagonal). If one of the mirrors is misaligned, this retroreflection property is spoiled. The microfabricated CCR includes an electrostatic actuator that can deflect one of the mirrors at kilohertz rates. It has been demonstrated that a CCR illuminated by an external light source can transmit back a modulated signal at kilobits per second. Since the dust mote itself does not emit light, the passive transmitter consumes little power. Using a microfabricated CCR, Chu and ter have demonstrated data transmission at a bit rate up to 1 kilobit per second, and over a range up to 150 meters, using a 5-milliwatt illuminating laser [2].

It should be emphasized that CCR-based passive optical links require an uninterrupted line-of-sight path. Moreover, a CCR-based passive transmitter is inherently directional; a CCR can transmit to the BTS only when the CCR body diagonal happens to point directly toward the BTS, within a few tens of degrees. A passive transmitter can be made more omnidirectional by employing several CCRs oriented in different directions, at the expense of increased dust mote size. If a dust mote employs only one or a few CCRs, the lack of omnidirectional transmission has important implications for feasible network routing strategies Applications: A smart dust network consisting of spatially distributed autonomous motes could be used to monitor and measure things like temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, and environmental pollutants. The development of wireless sensor networks was first motivated by their military applications, such as using sensor networks for battlefield surveillance. One can easily imagine the advantage of a government agency that could covertly spread motes from a plane over enemy territory. For civilian applications, a wide variety of smart dust applications are possible, such as agricultural, industrial, environmental, or healthcare

monitoring, home automation, and traffic control uses. Once the technology reaches the point where motes are actually the size of dust particles, the possible applications are endless motes could be mixed into paint to apply to the walls of your home or be woven into clothing fabric. Smart dust, once fully realized and the motes become cost effective to manufacture, is a technology that could conceivably be integrated into most commercial products. CONCLUSION: There has been a lot debate on the future implications of nanotechnology as a whole. While smart dust has the potential to create many new materials and devices with a vast range of applications,especially in the fields of medicine, electronics and energy production, like any nanotechnology, smart dust also raises many of the same issues, including concerns about the toxicity and environmental impact of nanomaterials, and the potential effects on global economics. On the fringe, there has been speculation about technologies like smart dust ultimately leading to various doomsday scenarios. Apparently, the concern is that once we create self-sustaining machines, we will lose control of them and they will take over the world and destroy life as we know it. Its doubtful that smart dust technology could cause any real environmental hazards and even more doubtful that motes will lead to the end of life on our planet. The benefits of smart dust technology far outweigh any of the potential risks and the people who invest in it early on will undoubtedly reap the rewards of their wise decision.

A ctive Transm itter w ith Laser D iode and B eam S teering P assive Transm itter w ith C o rner-C ube R etroreflector R eceiver w ith P hotodetector

A nalog I/O , D S P, C ontrol S enso rs P o w er C a pacitor

S olar C e ll

T hick-F ilm B attery

1-2 m m

Figure 1. Smart dust mote, containing microfabricated sensors, optical receiver, passive and active optical transmitters, signalprocessing and control circuitry, and power sources.

References:
1.B. Boser, Electronics for Micromachined Inertial Sensors, Transducers97, Chicago, Il., (June 1997), pp. 1169-1172. 2. P. B. Chu, N. R. Lo, E. C. Berg, K. S. J. Pister, Optical Communication Using Micro Corner Cube Reflectors, Proc. of IEEE MEMS Workshop, Nagoya, Japan, (January 1997), pp. 350-355. 3.W. Dabbous, E. Duros, T. Ernst, Dynamic Routing in Networks with Unidirectional Links, Workshop on Satellite-Based Information Systems, Budapest, (September 1997). 4.F. Gfeller and W. Hirt, A Robust Wireless Infrared System with Channel Reciprocity, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 36, no. 12, (December 1998), pp. 100-106. 5.D. Goodman, Wireless Personal Communication Systems, Addison-Wesley Longman, Reading, MA, 1997. 6.V. S. Hsu, J. M. Kahn, and K. S. J. Pister, Wireless Communications for Smart Dust, Electronics Research Laboratory Memorandum Number M98/2, 1998. 7.http://www.janet.ucla.edu/WINS.

8http://www.research.digital.com/wrl/projects/Factoid/ index.html.

Kahn, J.M., Katz, R.H., & Pister, K.S. (2000). Emerging Challenges: Mobile Networking for Smart Dust.

Retrieved from: http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~jmk/pubs/jcn.00.pdf. Steel, D. (2005). Smart Dust. UH ISRC Technology Briefing. Retrieved from: http://www.uhisrc.com/FTB/Smart%20Dust/Smart%20Dust.pdf.

Wikipedia. (2010). Smart Dust. Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartdust.

SMART DUST
V. Praveen chand Y8EC717 D.M.S.S.V.H COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ACHARYA NAGARJUNA UNIVERSITY, MACHILIPATNAM