MARWAR ENGINEERING COLLEGE

AND RESEARCH CENTRE

prepared by:-GAURAV JAIN 1

Smart Dust
 Discussions:

What is Smart Dust ?

Features
Component
Architecture
Applications
Future Work
Conclusion
What is Smart Dust?
Smart Dustis a hypothetical system of many tiny
micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) such
as sensors, robots, or other devices, that can
detect, for example :- light, temperature,
vibration, magnetism or chemicals;
are usually networked wirelessly; and are
distributed over some area to perform tasks,
usually sensing.
Features
A tiny dust size device with
extra-ordinary capabilities.
Often called micro electro-
 mechanical sensors(MEMS)
Combines sensing, computing, wireless
communication capabilities and
autonomous power supply within
volume of only few millimeters.
Useful in monitoring real world
phenomenon without disturbing the
original process.

Cont…
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.
Cont … Smart Dust Mote
Consist s of t iny,
wireless sensors or
m ot es.
Each m ot e is a t iny
com put er wit h a power
supply, one or m ore
sensors, and a
com m unicat ion syst em
It explores t he lim it s on
size and power
consum pt ion in
aut onom ous sensor
Components
A single Smart Dust mote contains:


§ MEMS sensors
§ a semiconductor laser diode and MEMS beam
steering mirror for active optical transmission
§ a MEMS corner cube retro-reflector for passive
optical transmission
§ an optical receiver
§ a signal processing and control circuitry
§ a power source based on thick-film batteries and
solar cells.

Components of Smart Dust

Prepared by GAURAV JAIN

Corner Cube Retro-
reflector(CCR)
Comprises of three mutually
perpendicular mirrors of gold-
coated poly-silicon.
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 cube’s body
diagonal.
CCR cont…
The micro-fabricated CCR includes
an electrostatic actuator that can
deflect one of the mirrors at
kilohertz rates.
Thus the external light source can
be transmitted back in the form of
modulated signal at kilobits per
second.
Note (CCR cont…)
CCR-based passive optical links require
an uninterrupted line-of-sight path.
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
omni-directional by employing several
CCRs oriented in different directions, at
the expense of increased dust mote
size.
Challenges
It is difficult to fit all these devices
in a small Smart Dust both size
wise and Energy wise.
With devices so small, batteries
present a massive addition of
weight.
Key Features of these
electronic particles

§ Power
n Survive for extended amount of time
nCom put at ion
nProcessSensor Dat a and
Com m unicat e
nSensors
nTo Int erface t o t he environm ent
nCom m unicat ion
nTo glue t he pieces of inform at ion
17
Architecture
Low Power
Communication Sensors
Front Computation Brain 1-Magnetometer
End 1-MCU 2- Light
1-Acoustic 2-FPGA 3-temperature
2-RF 4-pressure
3-Optical 5-Hmidity
6-Acceleration

Power
1-Bat
2-Sollar
3-Vibration
4-Acoustic Noise
18
Power
Power: Lithium Battery
n Big Problem
n Low capacity per unit of mass and volume
n Needs support by sleep mechanism and
low power techniques
n Not really so much innovation after Volta!
w Solar
w Vibration
w Acoustic noise
w Thermal conversion
w Nuclear Reaction
w Fuel Cells
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Computation
Computation: ATMEL91M404000
Micro Controller
Ø Core and variety of different functions
Ø Flash , SRAM , E2PROM
Ø GPIO , ADC , PWM ,Comparator
Ø Embedded serial Buses
Ø Ex: Microcontrollers Atmel , Microchip,
Motorola
Microprocessors Intel Strong-
Arms ,Motorola

FPGA
Ø Not Traditional Style Of Programming
 Hardware Descriptive
Language(VHDL,Verilog) 20
Ø
Sensors
Motion Sensing
n Magnetometer
w Study 3 Element of Earth Magnetic field
(Compass)
n Accelerometer
w To measure Local vertical (tilt switch) or measure
motion vectors


Environmental Sensing(Weather Monitoring)

n Pressure
w Barometer
n Temperature
n Light
n Humidity 21
Communication
Technologies
Acoustic Transmission
Radio Frequency Transmission
Optical transmission technique
 a) Passive Laser based
Communication
 b) Active Laser based
Communication
 c) Fiber Optic Communication
§
Acoustic Communication
Power Hungry
High Background Noise
Large Size (proportional to harmonics of
sound)
Fast Attenuation Curve
Low communication baud rate
Low power receiver
n Good for event driven wake up

systems
23
Radio Frequency
Transmission
Based on the generation, propagation
and detection of electromagnetic waves
with a frequency range from tens of kHz
to hundreds of GHz.
Multiplexing techniques: time, frequency
or code-division multiplexing.
Their use leads to modulation, bandpass
filtering, demodulation circuitry, and
additional circuitry, all of which needs to
be considered, based on power
consumption.
Problems with RF comm..
Large size of antenna.
RF communication can only be
achieved by using time, frequency
or code division.
TDMA, FDMA, and CDMA have their
own complications.
Optical Communication
Active
n High power laser source
n Transmission of modulated laser
beam
Passive
n MEMS Corner Cube Reflector
n Emit modulated ambient light
n Extremely low power


26
Passive Laser based
comm..
Downlink communication
 (BST to dust)- the base
 station points a modulated
 laser beam at a node.
 Dust uses a simple optical
 receiver to decode the incoming
message
Uplink communication (dust to BST)- the
base station points an un-modulated laser
beam at a node, which in turn modulates
and reflects back the beam to the BST
Advantages
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).
Advantages cont…
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
form of space-division multiplexing.
The CCR makes make it possible for dust
motes to use passive optical
transmission techniques, i.e., to
transmit modulated optical signals
without supplying any optical power.
Limitations
Is a single-hop network topology,
where dust nodes cannot directly
communicate with each other, but
only with a base station.
Communication may suffer from
variable delays if the laser beam is
not already pointing at a node that
is subject to communication with
the BST.
Active Laser Based
comm..
Has a semiconductor
 laser, a collimating lens
 and a beam-steering
 micro-mirror.
Uses an active-steered laser-diode
based transmitter to send a
collimated laser beam to a base
station .
Suitable for peer-to-peer comm..,
provided there exist a line of sight
path between the motes.
Advantages
One can form multi-hop networks
using active laser based comm..
Burst-mode communication
provides the most energy-efficient
way to schedule the multi-hop
network.
The active laser-diode transmitter
operates at up to several tens of
megabits per second for a few
milliseconds
Disadvantages
Relatively high power
consumption .
Thus can be used only for a short
duration burst-mode
communication.
Components like active beam-
steering mechanism makes the
design of the dust mote more
complicated.
Fiber Optic comm..
Employs semiconductor laser, fiber
cable and diode receiver to
generate, transfer and detect the
optical signal.
Similar to passive optical comm..
Relatively small size of the optical
transceiver is employed with low-
power operation.
CCR employed on each Dust mote
to m odulat e uplink dat a t o base
st at ion.
Fiber Optic comm. setup
Advantages
Does not require unbroken line-of-sight
and the link directionality.
Each dust mote does not need to employ
more than one CCR.
Comm.. between dust motes and a base
station can be guaranteed.
It has a longer range of communication
link than that of a free space passive
optical comm..
Limitations
Optical fiber cables restrict the
mobility of dust mote.
Since a base station should employ
several optical components for
fiber connection to each dust
mote, it may complicate base
station design.
Applications
It is a special class of sensor network
Fine sensing granularity
Applications :
n Forest fire warning
n Enemy troop monitoring
n Large scale Biology or Geology
n Smart office spaces
n Defense-related sensor networks
n Inventory Control

38
Applications cont…
§ Security and Tracking
§ Health and Wellness Monitoring
(enter human bodies and check
for physiological problems).
§ Factory and Process Automation.
§ Seismic and Structural Monitoring.
§ Monitor traffic and redirecting it.
Environmental protection
(identification and monitoring of
pollution).
§ Habitat monitoring (observing the
behavior of the animals in there
Cont …
Cont …
Cont… FOREST FIRE DETECTIONS
Cont…

STREET LIGHT MAINTANCE

Prepared by GAURAV JAIN
Cont…

SPOTTING PIPE COROSION

Cont…
The crawling microbot consume only
tens of micro watts of power;
the motors can lift more than 130
times the robot’s own weight. The
flying microbot have a wing span
of 10-25 mm and will sustain Crawling microbot
autonomous flight. Developers folded
50 micron thick stainless steel into
desired shape to create the wings
and exoskeleton. Piezoelectric
motors attached to the exoskeleton
actuate the wings. These legged
and winged microbots will consume
a total power of less than 10
milliwatts, provided by onboard solar
Cells to not only sense but interact to
Physical environment.
Flying microbot
Future Work
Design of multi hop network
Autonomous network configuration
Data Fusion
Network Decision making
Large Scale Distributed
Processing 

47
The Pioneers In Sm art Dust
Technology

Corpora Generat ions

Cont …
Circulatory Net Healt h and
Wellness Monit oring
(ent er hum an
bodies and check
for physiological
and biological
problem s).

Help t o det ect

diseases.
Group of sensors
inside t he body
Securit y and Tracking

Seism ic and
St ruct ural
Monit oring
Prepared by GAURAV JAIN
Cont …

Super Eye
(Dust Eye)
Conclusion
Sm art Dust t echnology provides
wireless, rem ot e m onit oring
solut ions.
Is available t oday in sizes ranging
from a few m m t o a few cm .
Ult im at e goal is t o reach m icro
m et er scale.
Due t o growing research int erest ,
sizes and cost are fast dim inishing.
References
1.Yunbin Song: ” Opt ical Com m unicat ion
Syst em s for Sm art Dust ”
2. J. M. Kahn, R. H. Kat z, K. S. J. Pist er: Next

Cent ury Challenges:

Mobile Net working for “ Sm art Dust ”

3. An Int roduct ion t o

Microelect rom echancal Syst em

Engineering: Nadim Maluf, Kirt William
4. B.A. Warneke, M.D. Scot t , B.S. Leibowit z:

Dist ribut ed Wireless Sensor Net work

5. ht t p://www.coe.berkeley.edu/labnot es


 Thank You!
This is not the END
It is merely the BEGINNING of
a glorious, wireless future!

So, stay connected!!