Ashish Ranjan Sinha

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Outline
• What is smart dust?
• Characteristics
•Applications
• Military
• Commercial
• Requirements and restrictions
• Analysis of smart dust communication
• General architecture and design
• What we have today
• Would like to have
• References

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 INTRODUCTION
What is Smart Dust?
Smart dust concept was introduced by Kristofer S J Pister.

Smart dust is a millimeter-scale sensing and communicating

devices.

Smart dust consist of hundreds to thousands of dust motes,

each containing the capability of sensing and monitoring
environmental conditions and communication to other
devices.

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 INTRODUCTION
A smart dust mote is an electronic package composed of

1. An integrated-circuit radio transmitter and receiver.

2. Microcontroller.
3. A random access memory.(RAM)
4. A flash memory.
5. Some standard sensors.
6. Analog to Digital converter.
7. A power source for the motes.
8.An antenna used for both transmission and receiving signals

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Smart dust characteristics
• A system is made of one or a few base stations (interrogators) and
as many smart dust motes as possible or required
• Ubiquitous – sensors of different types
• Very task/application oriented design and performance
• Wireless communication
• Self-organizing, self-optimizing, self-configuring, self-sustaining.
• Very small (should be under 1mm3)
• Low power consumption
• Easy to deploy
• Based on current or very near future components
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 APPLICATION
Collecting data for metrological, Geophysical, or
planetary research.
Tracking the movement of birds, Small animals.
Providing interfaces for the disabled.
Smart office spaces.
Track patient movements.
Inform of disasters, such as earthquakes.

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Some potential Applications
Three Potential application of smart dust are

• Forest service organization.

•For industrial purposes

•For providing lighting and power.

A forest service could use smart dust to monitor for fires in

forest.

Motes is used in industrial settings to reduce plant downtime

and enhance safety.

Street lighting(local) and power organization.

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12/02/09 8
 Circulatory Net

Group of sensors inside the body

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12/02/09 10
 Cubic –inch wireless sensor nodes(motes) using off-the-shelf technology.
1)A Radio frequency mote with temperature and light sensors.
2) A laser mote with temperature, light, humidity, barometric, pressure, and
sensors.

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 digital Light Sensor
Digital Temperature Sensor

3.6 Volt Lithium Battery Digital Light Sensor

General purpose LED ON-OFF Switch Wireless motes

Programming Connector

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Magnified view of the Smart Dust mote. 12
 Topology of a typical Smart Dust mote network.
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 Tracking process demonstration

Target
Track
Nodes
Clump
Track initiated
Readingsmoves
info
exchange
detected
head
info and
and
exchangeddetected
users
propagated
updated
Recourse selected
andreadings
chosen
propagated told
user told

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Penn State University and DARPA
 Power
The dust motes must have enough energy to survive anywhere
from a few hour to month.
Power system consist of thick film battery or a solar cell.
Current battery and capacitor technology can store
approximately 1J/cubic mm and 10mJ/cubic mm resp.
Solar cell can provide about 1J/day/mm square in sun light.
Solar cell provides 101mJ/day/mm square indoors.
The transmitter uses 1nj/bits.
Optical receiver of smart dust consume 0.1nJ/bit.
A/D will take 1nJ/sample.

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 Architecture

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 Communication
RF radio
Optical
Passive
Active

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Analysis of smart dust communication
RF vs. Optical
• RF – radio frequency
• MHz – hundreds of GHz ⇒ 1mm – 100s meters wavelength
• Technologies:
• Bluetooth
• Cell phones (GSM, CDMA, etc.)
• RFID
• Optical
• 100THz – 1PHz ⇒ 0.3µ - 1.6µ wavelength
• Lasers and LEDs

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RF
• Pros
• Well developed technologies
• Multiplexing techniques: TDMA, FDMA, CDMA.
• Does not require line of sight
• Not much affected by the environment
• Cons
• Antenna size (has to be at least ¼ of the wavelength)
• Complex circuitry (modulation/demodulation, bandpass filters, etc.)
• Energy consumption (approx. 100nJ/bit)

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Optical
• Pros
• Low energy consumption (<1nJ/bit)
• High data rates
• Small aperture, very directional (localization)
• Spatial division multiplexing
• Cons
• Very directional
• Line of sight
• Atmospheric turbulence, weather and environmental conditions
dependent
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 The base station

• Hand held
• Binoculars
• Palm
• Cell phone
• Laptop computer
• Command center
• Unmanned vehicle (land, sea, air)
• Autonomous systems

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What we have today

www.xbow.com www.dust-inc.com

• Different markets
• Airborne systems – monitoring, camera
stability, unmanned…
• Marine
• Land vehicles
• Environment
• Mote price ~100$
• Kit price (8-12 motes) ~ 2000$ • Building management
• Industrial monitoring
• Security
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Some basic energy data

• Digital calculations (e.g. writing/reading to/from

memory, magnetic (memory) or electronic
(transistors and gates) manipulations, Boolean,
arithmetic etc.) ~1pJ/bit
• Analog circuitry (e.g. amplification) ~1nJ/amp
• DAQ ~1nJ/sample (or passive in some sensors)
• A/D and D/A ~1nJ/instruction
• MEMs control ~ 1pJ/bit @ 1kb/sec
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