Smart Dust: The Future of communication and security

1. Smart Dust: The Future of communication and security

2. Discussions: • Definition • Features • Architecture • Prototypes • Communication • Security • Benefits and Concerns • Conclusion

3. What is Smart Dust? • Tiny dust size device that combine sensing, computing, wireless communication capabilities and autonomous power supply within volume of only few millimeters.

4. Smart Dust Features • Useful in monitoring real world phenomenon without disturbing the original process. • Consists of tiny, wireless sensors or motes. • Each mote is a tiny computer with a power supply, one or more sensors, and a communication system. • Small and light in weight

5. Smart Dust project Features: • Being developed at UC Berkeley by Prof. Pister and Prof Kahn. • It explores the limits on size and power consumption in autonomous sensor nodes. • Size reduction is important in order to make the nodes as inexpensive as possible and also easy to deploy. • The researchers believe that these nodes will be of the order of a few cubic millimeters and are called “Smart Dust”.

6. Technical Features • fusing MEMS (micro electromechanical) and electronics on one chip • Very small in size • cost - now about $50 - $100 per sensor, hopefully down to $1 in five years • Autonomous power supply • memory is only hundreds KB

7. Power and Energy • Sources • Solar cells • Combustion • Storage • Batteries • Capacitors

8. Architecture

9. 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.

10. Components of Smart Dust

11. Smart Dust Prototypes

12. Each sensor has incorporated into it… • a microprocessor • mini-battery source • Two way transmitter • Soon will be the size of a grain of sand named a mote.

13. 300 um Micro Mote - First Attempt

14. CommunicationTechnologies • Radio Frequency Transmission • Optical transmission technique • a) Passive Communication • b) Active Communication

15. RF communication • RF signals are used to communicate over relatively short distances. • Minimize mote size and power consumption. • In this case, each message is passed to a neighboring mote which is in turn passed to another nearby mote, and so on, until the message reaches the destination – the central monitoring station. • Form robust networks.

16. Optical Communication • Active • High power laser source • Transmission of modulated laser beam • Passive • Does not have an onboard light source • MEMS Corner Cube Reflector • Emit modulated ambient light

17. 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. • Proves effective in reducing energy consumption.

18. A CORNER CUBE RETROREFLECTOR

19. Disadvantages of optical communication • Requires an uninterrupted line-of-sight. • They also have directional characteristics that should be considered in system design. • Tradeoffs occur between bit rate, energy/bit and distance. • Active transmission consumes more power • Collision during transmission to base station is rare, but collision during point to point communication is a potential problem and a current research topic.

20. Smart Dust Processors • Require microprocessors and microcontrollers for all the required processing. • Microprocessors used are Intel Strong-Arms, Motorola . • Microcontrollers are Atmel, Microchip and Motorola

21. Communication • Smart dusts will be the future of communication, because its more reliable than the present communication network. • Even when a mote stops functioning, the next mote nearer to it resumes the operation of the destroyed mote.

22. Providing Security • Having many sensors, smart dust keeps track of environmental changes and alerts the concerned if something unexpected happens. • They are used in sensing forest fires, fires in buildings • Weather reporting would be easy.

23. APPLICATIONS • FOREST SERVICE • STREET LIGHTING

25. APPLICATIONS contd. • INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS • MILITARY APPLICATIONS • BIOTECHNOLOGY • REMOTE SENSING • ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING • STRUCTURAL SOUNDNESS OF BUILDINGS

26. ISSUES & Future trends Issues • Privacy • Security • Environmental Impacts Future • Motes sold in the future will be smaller and cheaper • Even as the price of smart dust falls, revenues for the vendors of these devices are expected to increase

27. Benefits/Concerns • Pros • Flexibility • Affordability • Efficiency • Cons • Privacy • Security • Volume • Toxicity

28. Conclusion • Privacy is a major concern. • But benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. • Dealing with partial disconnections while establishing communication links poses critical research challenges • Smart Dust technology provides wireless, remote monitoring solutions. • Is available today in sizes ranging from a few mm to a few cm. • Ultimate goal is to reach micro meter scale. • Due to growing research interest, sizes and cost are fast diminishing.

29. This is all ! This is not the END It is merely the BEGINNING of a glorious, wireless future! So, stay connected!!

30. References • http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu • http://www-bsac.eecs.berkeley.edu

31. THANK YOU!