This document discusses smart dust, which are tiny wireless sensing devices that can measure light, temperature, vibration and other environmental factors. Smart dust was invented in 2001 and funded by DARPA for military surveillance applications. Individual smart dust motes are only a few millimeters in size and contain sensors, microprocessors, radio transmitters and batteries. They are designed to operate autonomously for weeks to years while wirelessly communicating sensor readings to other devices. Potential uses include distributed environmental monitoring, military surveillance networks and future planetary exploration.

1. “SMART DUST”
Sensing the Future…
- Sucheta Mandal

2. Presentation Profile
1.Introduction
2.History
3.Technology
4.Mote Design

3. Introducing Smart dust
• It is mainly Micro-Electro-Mechanical System.
• It combines sensing, robotics, computing that
can sense light, temperature ,vibration ,
magnetism or chemicals.
• They are usually networked wirelessly and are
distributed over some area to perform tasks,
usually sensing.

4. History of Smart Dust
• Smart dust was invented
in 2001 by Kristopher S. J.
Pister, who is an electrical
engineering and computer
science professor for the
University of California
• The DARPA (NASA) has
been funding Smart Dust
research heavily seeing
virtually limitless
applications in the sphere
of modern warfare.

5. Characteristics of
Smart Dust(DARPA)
Besides the functionality it has bi-directional
radio, the microprocessor controller, and the
battery.
It has 20 meter communication range
It has one week lifetime in continuous operation,
2 years with 1% duty cycling.
Current motes are about 5mm

6. Technology Includes
1. MEMS sensors
2. MEMS beam steering mirror for
active optical transmission
3. MEMS corner cube retro
reflector for passive optical
transmission
4. An optical receiver
5. Signal processing and control
circuitry
6. A power source based on thick
film batteries and solar cells

7. Smart Dust Components

8. CCR
• It comprises three mutually
perpendicular mirrors of gold-coated
polysilicon
• The CCR has the property that any
incident ray of light is reflected back
to the source
• Using a micro-fabricated CCR, we can
achieve data transmission at a bit
rate up to 1 kilobit per second, and
over a range up to 150 meters, using
a 5milliwatt illuminating laser

9. Operation on Mote
• Periodically the microcontroller gets a reading from
one of the sensors, which measure one of a number
of physical or chemical stimuli such as temperature,
ambient light, vibration, acceleration, or air pressure,
processes the data, and stores it in memory.
• It also occasionally turns on the optical receiver to
see if anyone is trying to communicate with it
• This communication may include new programs or
messages from other motes
• Microcontroller will use the corner cube retro
reflector or laser to transmit sensor data or a
message to a base station or another mote.

10. Power Savings
• Most of the time, the majority of the mote is powered off
with only a clock and a few timers running
• A few of the timers control the sensors
• When one of these timers expires, it powers up the
corresponding sensor, takes a sample, and converts it to a
digital word
• Received data may either be stored directly in the SRAM or
the microcontroller is powered up to perform more complex
operations with it.
• Some timer controls the receiver. When that timer expires,
the receiver powers up and looks for an incoming packet

11. Smart Mesh
The Smart Mesh sits
between sensors and
systems, providing
connection between
these two layers.
Each node of Smart
Mesh, or 'mote,' is a
ultra low-power
wireless
communication node.

12. Space Exploration with Smart Dust
• Deploying such a system on an alien world
would be a lot cheaper than sending a
massive rover, Lander, or orbiter.
• The orbiter would act as a forward base of
operations, centralizing incoming data, and
the processing them before sending them to
Earth.
• Exporting the myth of Universe will be faster