Smart Dust

Presented By:
Aman Bains
0191432007
 Smart Dust

Tiny airborne devices containing

sensors and communications
capabilities.
Outline:
• What is smart dust?
• Motes
• Architecture
• Communications
• Conservation of Power and Working
• Applications
 What is it?
• Smart dust consist of tiny
microelectromechanical wireless devices that can
sense anything from light to vibration.
• Combines sensing, computing, wireless
communication capabilities and autonomous
power supply within volume of only few
millimeters.
• Concept was introduced by Kristofer S.J. Pister
(University of California) in 2001
• Also referred to as motes.
 What is it?
• Useful in monitoring real world phenomenon
without disturbing the original process.
• so small and light in weight that they can remain
suspended in the environment like an ordinary
dust particle.
• the air currents can also move them in the
direction of flow.
• It is very hard to detect the presence of the
Smart Dust and it is even harder to get rid of
them once deployed.
 Motes
• The core of a mote is a small, low-cost, low-power
computer.
• The computer monitors one or more sensors.
• Sensors can be for temperature, light, sound, position,
acceleration, vibration, stress, weight, pressure,
humidity, etc.
• They connect to the outside world.
• Commonly a mote can transmit at a distance of
something like 3 to 61 meters.
• Power consumption, size and cost are the barriers to
longer distances.
 A mote

• Scientists are expecting and working

to make it of size of 1 cubic millimeter.
 Architecture

Low Power Sensors

Communication Front End Computation Brain 1-Magnetometer
1-Acoustic 1-MCU 2- Light
2-RF 2-FPGA 3-temperature
3-Optical 4-pressure
5-Hmidity
6-Acceleration

Power
1-Battery
2-Solar
3-Vibration
4-Acoustic Noise
8
 Sensors

• Motion Sensing
– Magnetometer
• Measures strength and/or direction of magnetic field
– Accelerometer
• Measures acceleration
• Environmental Sensing(Weather Monitoring)
– Pressure
– Temperature
– Light
– Humidity
 Ad hoc Networking

Small dust motes use ad hoc

networking , i.e. each node is capable
of locating and sending signals to
other nodes.
 Communication

• Acoustic
• Radio frequency
• Optical
– Passive
– Active

11
 Acoustic Communication

• Power Hungry
• High Background Noise
• Large Size (proportional to harmonics of sound)
• Fast Attenuation Curve

12
 Radio Communication

• Based on the generation, propagation and

detection of electromagnetic waves with a
frequency range from tens of kHz to hundreds of
GHz
• New low power techniques
– Not robust (No fancy Spread Spectrum)

13
 Problems with Radio comm..

•Large size of antenna.

•Radio communication can only be

achieved by using time, frequency or
code division.

•TDMA, FDMA, and CDMA have their

own complications.
 Optical Communication

• Active
– High power laser source
– Transmission of modulated laser beam
• Passive
– MEMS Corner Cube Reflector
– Emit modulated ambient light
– Extremely low power

15
 Operation of the mote
• Smart Dust mote is run by the microcontroller.
Microcontroller:
Determines the tasks performed by mote.
Controls power to various components
to conserve energy.
 Microcontroller
• Microcontroller gets readings from sensors
• Processes the data and stores it in memory
• Occasionally turns on the receiver to see if
anyone is trying to communicate with it
• Sends messages
 Constraints
• Primary constraint in the design of smart dust
mote is volume.
• Volume in turn puts a constraint on energy
since there is less space for batteries or large
solar cells
 Conservation of Power and Working
• Most of the time a majority of the mote is powered off
• Only a clock and few timers run all the time
• When a timer expires it powers up a part of the mote
to carry out a job
• Sensor when powered up takes a sample, converts it to
digital word. If the data is interesting, it may either be
stored directly in SRAM or microcontroller is powered
up to perform complex operations
• When the task is complete everything is again
powered down
 Conservation of Power and Working
• Receiver is also controlled by a timer
• When timer expires ,the receiver powers up
and looks for an incoming packet
• If it does not see a packet , it is powered down
again
• If a packet is received microcontroller is
powered up and used to interpret the
contents of the message.
 Conservation of Power and Working
• 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
• The packet is transmitted using corner cube retro
reflector or the laser diode, depending on what
it has
• Corner cube retro reflector transmits
information just by moving a mirror ,changing the
reflection of laser beam
 Power conservation and Working
• With a laser diode and beam scanning mirrors,
data can be sent in any direction
 Applications
• To monitor pollution in environment
• To observe the behavior of the animals in
their natural habitat
• To monitor activities in inaccessible areas
during military operations, to alert soldiers of
any poisonous biological substances
• Home sensor network
 Conclusion
• The main purpose of all ongoing researches is
to make small dust motes as small as possible
and to make them available at as low price as
possible
• And we will see the small dust motes being
used in various spans of our life
 References
• www.wikipedia.org
• http://
robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/SmartDust
/
• www.howstuffworks.com
• Optical Communication Systems for Smart
Dust by Yunbin Song
Thank You