22-02-2011, 12:51 PM
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1 Introduction
”Smart Dust” is an emerging technology made up from tiny, wireless sensors or “motes.”Eventually, these devices will be smart enough to talk with other sensors yet small enough to fiton the head of a pin. Each mote is a tiny computer with a power supply, one or more sensors,and a communication system (Hsu, Kahn, and Pister 1998, p. 1).Commercially available motes do not yet fit on the head of a pin; some are about the size of adeck of cards and others are as small as a stack of a few quarters (Eng 2004). Smart dust motesare typically outfitted with environmental sensors which can monitor things like temperature,humidity, lighting, position, and acceleration (Crossbow 2004a). And one vendor, SkyeTek,sells a sensor that can read RFID tags (SkyeTek 2005).Dust mote battery life ranges from a few hours to 10 years, depending on the size andcapabilities of the device (Bigelow 2004). Future motes will be smaller and have longer batterylives. Already, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) havedeveloped a mote roughly the size of an aspirin tablet (Yang 2003). For power, future motescould be supplemented by solar cells or even be powered by “vibrations in the wall – a bit likea self winding wristwatch” (Manjoo 2001).There are numerous applications for smart dust technology, and as motes become smaller,cheaper, and better understood many other uses will emerge. Three potential applications ofsmart dust technology are illustrated here – one involving a forest service organization, anotherfor a chemical plant, and one for a provider of lighting and power.A forest service could use smart dust to monitor for fires in a forest (Eng 2004). In thisscenario, forest service personnel would drop the dust from an airplane and then count on thesensors to self-organize into a network. In the event of a fire, a mote that notices unusualtemperatures in its zone would alert neighboring notes that would in turn notify other motes inthe network. In this way the network of motes would notify a central monitoring station of thefire and the location of the mote that noticed it. Equipped with prompt notice of the fire and itsapproximate location, firefighters could race to the scene and fight the fire while it is small. Bylinking similar networks of motes to a central fire reporting system, the system can be extendedto monitor an enormous region in a national forest.Motes will be applied in industrial settings to reduce plant downtime and enhance safety.Consider the scenario of a chemical plant that utilizes pipes to transport acidic or abrasiveliquids. The chemical contents of the pipes can gradually weaken them so, to preventaccidental chemical releases, plant operators must periodically inspect piping and other“components that may be susceptible to wall thinning caused by erosion/corrosion” (Jonas1996). Today, this inspection process is labor intensive for pipes covered with insulation andfor pipes located in confined areas. In the future, smart dust could be employed to facilitate1 inspections. With this, a plant operator would place several corrosion-detecting motes onpiping throughout the plant and then configure a central monitoring station to receive statusupdates from the motes. And because the motes can be installed under pipe insulation, plantpersonnel would no longer need to manually remove insulation to evaluate the condition of apipe (Gibbons-Paul 2004). With this system, the plant manger benefits from having up-to-datestatus information of all piping while avoiding the costs of manual inspections.In business, smart dust will be applied in similar innovative ways to improve services and savemoney. One such scenario involves a local lighting and power organization. Today, in order todetermine which of thousands of street lights, are out or in need of service the power companyperiodically surveys the lights after sunset or waits for a customer complaint. But imagine ifthe organization monitored its service area with thousands of cheap, light-sensor equippedmotes. The firm can now immediately pinpoint the location of non-working lights withoutincurring the labor and transportation costs of a physical survey. Repairs can be organized in amore systematic manner, complaint calls can be reduced, and customers will be more satisfied(Wired 2003).This paper focuses on business applications of smart dust. It begins with an executiveoverview of the technology which is followed by a discussion of current and potential businessapplications. Also, the cost of smart dust technology and a list of vendors is presented. Beforeconcluding, the paper highlights problems and issues associated with smart dust.
2 Overview of Smart Dust
This section describes smart dust, beginning with a summary of early development work at UCBerkeley. Also presented are two notable smart dust applications completed in the beginningstages of smart dust history. This is followed by a description of current smart dust offeringsand expected trends for the technology.
2.1 History Smart dust
was conceived in 1998 by Dr. Kris Pister of the UC Berkeley (Hsu, Kahn, and Pister1998; Eisenberg 1999). He set out to build a device with a sensor, communication device, andsmall computer integrated into a single package. The Defense Advanced Research ProjectsAgency (DARPA)1 funded the project, setting as a goal the demonstration “that a completesensor/communication system can be integrated into a cubic millimeter package” (Pister 2001).(By comparison, a grain of rice has a volume of about 5 cubic millimeters.)In the early stages of the project, the team gained experience by building relatively large motesusing components available “off the shelf” (Pister 2001). One such mote, named “RF Mote,”has sensors for “temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, light intensity, tilt and vibration,and magnetic field” and it is capable of communicating distances of about 60 feet using radiofrequency (RF) communication2 (Pister 2000). If the mote operated continuously, its batterywould last up to one week (ibid). .2 One of the issues that the UC Berkeley team faced in building smaller motes involvedpowering the device. Small batteries help minimize the size of the resulting mote, but theycontain less energy than traditional, larger batteries and thus, they have shorter life spans3(Yang 2003). However, long battery life is critical to applications where it would be costly,inconvenient, or impossible to retrieve a smart dust mote in order to replace its batteries. Thiswould be true, for example, with temperature and humidity-monitoring motes placed inside thewalls of a building during its construction (Eisenberg 2002, cf. Pescovitz 2001).Faced with the trade-off between miniaturization and long battery life, early smart dustdevelopers leaned toward miniaturization. The Smart Dust project Web site states that “[t]heprimary constraint in the design of Smart Dust motes is volume, which puts a severe constrainton energy since we do not have much room for batteries or large solar cells” (Pister 2001).However, the team applied tactics to conserve the available energy to prolong battery life. Oneapproach, taken by Dr. David Culler, was to design “software that enabled the motes to ‘sleep’most of the time yet ‘wake up’ regularly to take readings and communicate” (Schmidt 2004).This allows for energy conservation during the sleep period.The UC Berkeley team equipped some of their early motes with optical communicationsystems in order to reduce power consumption and allow for a smaller device (Warneke et al.2001). With this scheme, a mote designated as “active” was equipped with a transmittingdevice similar to what is found in the laser pointers used by presenters in business presentations(ibid, p. 48). Another energy-saving approach the researchers explored was passivetransmission (Hsu, Kahn, and Pister 1998). A mote with a passive communication system doesnot have an “onboard light source” but instead it uses a series of mirrors controlled by a smallelectrical charge (Warneke et al. 2001, p. 47). When a laser is pointed toward the mote, it canrapidly adjust the position of its mirrors to send messages encoded in pulses of light; themessage could then be read by a special optical receiver. This passive communication systemproved effective in reducing energy consumption, but it has limitations because passive motesin a network cannot directly “communicate with one another” and instead have to “rely on acentral station equipped with a light source to send and receive data from other motes
1 Introduction
”Smart Dust” is an emerging technology made up from tiny, wireless sensors or “motes.”Eventually, these devices will be smart enough to talk with other sensors yet small enough to fiton the head of a pin. Each mote is a tiny computer with a power supply, one or more sensors,and a communication system (Hsu, Kahn, and Pister 1998, p. 1).Commercially available motes do not yet fit on the head of a pin; some are about the size of adeck of cards and others are as small as a stack of a few quarters (Eng 2004). Smart dust motesare typically outfitted with environmental sensors which can monitor things like temperature,humidity, lighting, position, and acceleration (Crossbow 2004a). And one vendor, SkyeTek,sells a sensor that can read RFID tags (SkyeTek 2005).Dust mote battery life ranges from a few hours to 10 years, depending on the size andcapabilities of the device (Bigelow 2004). Future motes will be smaller and have longer batterylives. Already, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) havedeveloped a mote roughly the size of an aspirin tablet (Yang 2003). For power, future motescould be supplemented by solar cells or even be powered by “vibrations in the wall – a bit likea self winding wristwatch” (Manjoo 2001).There are numerous applications for smart dust technology, and as motes become smaller,cheaper, and better understood many other uses will emerge. Three potential applications ofsmart dust technology are illustrated here – one involving a forest service organization, anotherfor a chemical plant, and one for a provider of lighting and power.A forest service could use smart dust to monitor for fires in a forest (Eng 2004). In thisscenario, forest service personnel would drop the dust from an airplane and then count on thesensors to self-organize into a network. In the event of a fire, a mote that notices unusualtemperatures in its zone would alert neighboring notes that would in turn notify other motes inthe network. In this way the network of motes would notify a central monitoring station of thefire and the location of the mote that noticed it. Equipped with prompt notice of the fire and itsapproximate location, firefighters could race to the scene and fight the fire while it is small. Bylinking similar networks of motes to a central fire reporting system, the system can be extendedto monitor an enormous region in a national forest.Motes will be applied in industrial settings to reduce plant downtime and enhance safety.Consider the scenario of a chemical plant that utilizes pipes to transport acidic or abrasiveliquids. The chemical contents of the pipes can gradually weaken them so, to preventaccidental chemical releases, plant operators must periodically inspect piping and other“components that may be susceptible to wall thinning caused by erosion/corrosion” (Jonas1996). Today, this inspection process is labor intensive for pipes covered with insulation andfor pipes located in confined areas. In the future, smart dust could be employed to facilitate1 inspections. With this, a plant operator would place several corrosion-detecting motes onpiping throughout the plant and then configure a central monitoring station to receive statusupdates from the motes. And because the motes can be installed under pipe insulation, plantpersonnel would no longer need to manually remove insulation to evaluate the condition of apipe (Gibbons-Paul 2004). With this system, the plant manger benefits from having up-to-datestatus information of all piping while avoiding the costs of manual inspections.In business, smart dust will be applied in similar innovative ways to improve services and savemoney. One such scenario involves a local lighting and power organization. Today, in order todetermine which of thousands of street lights, are out or in need of service the power companyperiodically surveys the lights after sunset or waits for a customer complaint. But imagine ifthe organization monitored its service area with thousands of cheap, light-sensor equippedmotes. The firm can now immediately pinpoint the location of non-working lights withoutincurring the labor and transportation costs of a physical survey. Repairs can be organized in amore systematic manner, complaint calls can be reduced, and customers will be more satisfied(Wired 2003).This paper focuses on business applications of smart dust. It begins with an executiveoverview of the technology which is followed by a discussion of current and potential businessapplications. Also, the cost of smart dust technology and a list of vendors is presented. Beforeconcluding, the paper highlights problems and issues associated with smart dust.
2 Overview of Smart Dust
This section describes smart dust, beginning with a summary of early development work at UCBerkeley. Also presented are two notable smart dust applications completed in the beginningstages of smart dust history. This is followed by a description of current smart dust offeringsand expected trends for the technology.
2.1 History Smart dust
was conceived in 1998 by Dr. Kris Pister of the UC Berkeley (Hsu, Kahn, and Pister1998; Eisenberg 1999). He set out to build a device with a sensor, communication device, andsmall computer integrated into a single package. The Defense Advanced Research ProjectsAgency (DARPA)1 funded the project, setting as a goal the demonstration “that a completesensor/communication system can be integrated into a cubic millimeter package” (Pister 2001).(By comparison, a grain of rice has a volume of about 5 cubic millimeters.)In the early stages of the project, the team gained experience by building relatively large motesusing components available “off the shelf” (Pister 2001). One such mote, named “RF Mote,”has sensors for “temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, light intensity, tilt and vibration,and magnetic field” and it is capable of communicating distances of about 60 feet using radiofrequency (RF) communication2 (Pister 2000). If the mote operated continuously, its batterywould last up to one week (ibid). .2 One of the issues that the UC Berkeley team faced in building smaller motes involvedpowering the device. Small batteries help minimize the size of the resulting mote, but theycontain less energy than traditional, larger batteries and thus, they have shorter life spans3(Yang 2003). However, long battery life is critical to applications where it would be costly,inconvenient, or impossible to retrieve a smart dust mote in order to replace its batteries. Thiswould be true, for example, with temperature and humidity-monitoring motes placed inside thewalls of a building during its construction (Eisenberg 2002, cf. Pescovitz 2001).Faced with the trade-off between miniaturization and long battery life, early smart dustdevelopers leaned toward miniaturization. The Smart Dust project Web site states that “[t]heprimary constraint in the design of Smart Dust motes is volume, which puts a severe constrainton energy since we do not have much room for batteries or large solar cells” (Pister 2001).However, the team applied tactics to conserve the available energy to prolong battery life. Oneapproach, taken by Dr. David Culler, was to design “software that enabled the motes to ‘sleep’most of the time yet ‘wake up’ regularly to take readings and communicate” (Schmidt 2004).This allows for energy conservation during the sleep period.The UC Berkeley team equipped some of their early motes with optical communicationsystems in order to reduce power consumption and allow for a smaller device (Warneke et al.2001). With this scheme, a mote designated as “active” was equipped with a transmittingdevice similar to what is found in the laser pointers used by presenters in business presentations(ibid, p. 48). Another energy-saving approach the researchers explored was passivetransmission (Hsu, Kahn, and Pister 1998). A mote with a passive communication system doesnot have an “onboard light source” but instead it uses a series of mirrors controlled by a smallelectrical charge (Warneke et al. 2001, p. 47). When a laser is pointed toward the mote, it canrapidly adjust the position of its mirrors to send messages encoded in pulses of light; themessage could then be read by a special optical receiver. This passive communication systemproved effective in reducing energy consumption, but it has limitations because passive motesin a network cannot directly “communicate with one another” and instead have to “rely on acentral station equipped with a light source to send and receive data from other motes
