Embedded Computing Seminar

Noam Sapiens

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

What is Smart Dust?

Large scale networks of wireless sensors for various applications

The three key capabilities of smart dust are: Sensory capabilities Processing capabilities Communication capabilities

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

Military and Space applications

Internal and external spacecraft monitoring
Meteorological and seismological monitoring in difficult terrain and environments Land/space communication Chemical/biological environment sensing

Meteorological sensing for better aiming of guns and artillery

Autonomous vehicles external aid

 Surveillance

Sensors minefield e.g. smart clear tracks on borders

Urban engagement (cont. DARPA funding in 2005) Motion detection and enemy numbers

Bunker/building mapping
Peace time/treaty monitoring Intelligence in hostile areas/behind enemy lines Transportation monitoring and traffic mapping Missile hunting

Monitoring soldier vitals and injury

Pursuit aid

Unmanned pursuit
Integration of several smart dust experiments

Aerial smart dust deployment in the area of interest ground and air
Sensors:
Energy tradeoff

Each mote has motion detectors and a small CMOS camera

Some motes has GPS

Computation: Communication: Ad-hoc networking Relative localization
UC Berkeley and MLB Co.

Local coordinate system

Image processing for target distinction

Northwestern university

UC Berkley PEG (pursuit-evasion game) experiment

200 sensors network
One aerial and three ground unmanned vehicles pursuers One ground unmanned evader Pursuers are interrogators of the sensor network deployed Sensor networks roles: Provide complete monitoring of the environment, overcoming the limited sensing range of on board sensors

Relay secure information to the pursuers to design and implement an optimal pursue strategy
Provide guidance to pursuers, when GPS or other navigation sensors may fail

UC Berkeley

Experiment block diagram

Evader Dynamics

Sensor Network

Pursuer Pursuer Dynamics GPS

Evader motion estimator

Tracking control Pursuit Strategy

Commercial applications
Games and sports
Traffic monitoring Inventory control

Security
Identification and tagging Predictive maintenance Product quality control Industrial facilities Vehicles and systems Appliances Agriculture

 Building management
Energy management Temperature control

Lighting control
Fire systems Smart office spaces Computer interface Virtual keyboard

3D virtual sculpturing
Health, medicine and wellness Handicap aid

Requirements
Perform a specific task according to the application Sense as defined by the task profile (different types of detectors will not be discussed in this talk)

Perform basic computations digitization, noise filtering, DSP, FFT, image processing, decision making, localization, etc
Establish ad-hoc communication in a physical environment Base station communication and peer to peer Ranges between a few meters (between motes) and over a km (motes to base station) Multi-hop routing (if required) Self configuration and optimization

Restrictions
Mote volume will not exceed 1mm3
A single mote is probably restricted to few sensory capabilities Energy restrictions Battery 1J/mm3 (about 10W for a day) Capacitors 1mJ/mm3 Solar cells 1J/day (sun) or 1mJ/day (room light) Vibrations 0.4-30W (depends on amplitude and frequency)

Thermopile 0.4-2W @ 25-37C

Very low cost motes (enable large scale distribution) No science fiction technologies

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 0.3 - 1.6 wavelength

Lasers and LEDs

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 of the wavelength) Complex circuitry (modulation/demodulation, bandpass filters, etc.) Energy consumption (approx. 100nJ/bit)

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

General smart dust mote architecture - optical

SEM view

Laser diode

MEM mirror

Lens

Optical view

UC Berkeley

Airborne base station example

UC Berkeley and MLB Co.

Challenges for mobile networking for smart dust

Line of sight requirement Link directionality Parallel readout and cross talk Trade-offs

Revisit rates

Line of sight requirement

Optical communication requires photons from the transmitter reach the receiver photons travel in straight lines Line of sight is not the only way of making the photons arrive at a desired location: Diffuse reflections low energy, wide spread (the entire FOV) Cannot work with passive and low contrast with the environment (especially with communication, very small SNR interrogating beam) Non fixed smart dust systems - line of sight could be achieved intermittently Latency Ad hoc multi-hop routing Algorithms Latency Reliability

Link directionality
General Motes are unaware of neighbors location Base station can disseminate location information to motes Passive links A corner cube retro-reflector angle of acceptance is 10-20 Placing multiple corner cubes Placing the corner cube and the receiver on a MEM mount signal maximization Increase mote density high probability for communication with at least some motes in the area of interest

Active links Mote receiver is omnidirectional within a hemisphere Enables mote attention without aiming No source identification Making the receiver directional (by adding a lens) and connecting its directionality to the transmitter will enable communication automatically to the source Requires aiming Solved by increasing the density of motes In a static system, identification could be saved in mote memory Difference between receiver and transmitter angular spreads leads to non-reciprocal linking

Parallel readout and crosstalk

The network architecture of smart dust enables space division multiplexing in the base station

There are as many channels as there are pixels in the CMOS camera of the base station
If the interrogating beam is divergent enough several motes could be ready simultaneously A base station will not distinguish between motes in the same space equivalent pixel

TDMA could be incorporated in the architecture modulation of the interrogating beam could establish a clock for synchronization
Demand access method (as in cellular and satellite networks) could be implemented as well a mote sends an active short pulse to the base station will receive attention by the interrogation beam of the base station

Trade-offs

SNR signal to noise ratio, governs the probability for bit error Pt average transmitter power A receiver area N0 receiver inherent noise

B bit rate
r the distance between the transmitter and receiver

- beam divergence

Revisit rate
Revisit rate should be application specific
Use of AI learning system Frequent revisits to areas in which changes happen most rapidly Could be based on human judgment or automatic Could be based on the demand access method

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

Would like to have capabilities (a partial list)

Miniaturization of available smart dust and extreme price reduction Possibility of optical pre-processing and optical circuits Incorporate the concept of smart dust societies integration of different types of smart dust

Requires more robust network protocols

Requires better definition of mote task Enables complex systems easy distribution Enables smaller and cheaper motes

 Multi wavelength VCSEL arrays will enable smart dust WDM

capabilities Beam quality control (divergence) for easier scanning

Electro-optic instead of MEMs

Higher bit rate (will be required for very large networks) Lower energy (about 20pJ/bit @ 10Mb/sec)

Active smart dust interfaces, robotic capabilities and motion

Rocket chip

UCSD

References
JM Kahn, RH Katz & KSJ Pister, Emerging challenges: mobile networking for smart dust, J. of Comm. and Net. 2 pp.188-196 (2000) Y Song, Optical Communication Systems for Smart Dust, M.Sc. Thesis, Virginia polytechnic institute and state university, 2002 The following urls: http://www.darpa.mil/ http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/SmartDust/ http://www-bsac.eecs.berkeley.edu/archive/users/warnekebrett/SmartDust/index.html http://www.xbow.com/ http://www.dust-inc.com/ http://chem-faculty.ucsd.edu/sailor/research/highlights.html http://www.nanotech-now.com/smartdust.htm