Mobile Networking for Smart Dust

J.M. Kahn, R.H. Katz and K.S.J. Pister

Department of Electrical Engineering

and Computer Sciences
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

Supported by DARPA MTO MEMS Program

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 Outline

• Smart Dust
– What is it?
– Applications
• Power Management
• Delivery and Interrogation
• Smart Dust Networking
– Radio-frequency communication
– Optical communication: passive dust mote transmitters
– Optical communication: active dust mote transmitters
• Summary

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 Smart Dust

• A dust mote is an autonomous node

incorporating sensing, computing,
communications and a power source in a
mm3 volume
• A collection of dust motes is dispersed
throughout an environment
• Dust motes use wireless communication to
relay information to a base station over
distances of 10s to 1000s of m

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 Smart Dust Mote

ActiveTransmitterwithLaser
PassiveTransmitterwith
Diode and BeamSteering
Corner-Cube Retroreflector

Receiver with Photodetector

Sensors Analog I/O, DSP, Control

Power Capacitor

Solar Cell

Thick-FilmBattery

1-2mm

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 Applications of Smart Dust

• Civilian
– Surveillance
– Meteorological or geophysical monitoring
– Non-invasive measurement
– Measurement in hostile environments
• Military
– Stealthy monitoring of hostile environments
– Perimeter surveillance
– Chemical or biological monitoring
– Identification of friend or foe

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 Power Management

• Sources
– Solar cells
– Thermopiles
• Storage
– Batteries ~1 J/mm3
– Capacitors ~1 µJ/mm3
• Usage
– Digital control: nW
– Analog circuitry: nJ/sample
– Communication: nJ/bit

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 Delivery and Interrogation

• Delivery Systems
– Manual
– Micro air vehicle
– Projectile
– Wind-borne (“maple seeds”)
• Interrogation
– Hand-held “binoculars”
– Micro air vehicle

MAV built by MLB Co.

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Radio-Frequency Communications

• Pros
– Long range
– Line-of-sight path not required
– Not severely affected by rain, fog or atmospheric
turbulence
• Cons
– Antenna may be too large for dust motes
– Requires modulator, demodulator, filtering (power
consumption)
– Requires complex multiplexing scheme (TDMA, FDMA,
CDMA)

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 Corner-Cube Retroreflector
Reflected
Radiant
Direction Intensity
of Incidence

Body Diagonal

Light Collection Area

– Fabricate CCR using MEMS technology.

– Light striking within about ±30° of body diagonal undergoes 3
bounces and returns to source in a narrow beam (<< 1°).
– Can deflect one mirror electrostatically, modulating return
beam at up to ~10 kbps.
– Dust mote can transmit passively: without radiating energy and
without aiming beam.

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First-Generation Dust Mote

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 Optical Communication Using
Passive Dust Mote Transmitters
ModulatedDownlink Data or
Unmodulated Interrogation
Beam for Uplink

Lens Photo-
detector
Downlink
Data In Laser Downlink
Data Out

Signal Selection Uplink

and Processing Data In
CCD Corner-Cube
Image Lens Retroreflector
Sensor Modulated Reflected
Array Beam for Uplink
Dust Mote
Uplink Uplink
Data . . . Data
Out1 Out N
Base-Station Transceiver

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 Optical Communication Using
Passive Dust Mote Transmitters (cont.)

Dust
Mote
Base
Station
Transceiver

Dust
Transmitter Radiant Intensity Mote
Receiver Light Collection Area

– Requires each dust mote to have a line-of-sight path to

the base station.
– Uplink transmissions are multiplexed using space-
division multiplexing.

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 Optical Communication Using
Passive Dust Mote Transmitters (cont.)

• Protocol
– Dust motes are asleep.
– Base station broadcasts a wakeup/query, then a periodic
interrogating signal synchronized to its camera.
– Dust motes wake up, transmit simultaneously to base
station, synchronized to its camera.
• Reliability
– Dust mote positions and orientations are random, and
some are not in field-of-view of base station. To insure
coverage, use an excess of dust motes.
– Base station is only single point of failure.

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 Optical Communication Using
Passive Dust Mote Transmitters (cont.)

• Pros
– Dust motes need not radiate power, nor steer beam
– Exploits asymmetry: powerful base station, low-power
dust motes
– Utilizes space-division multiplexing
– Only baseband electronics are required
• Cons
– Requires line-of-sight path to base station
– Short range (up to about 1 km)
– Bit rate limited to about 10 kbps
– Affected by rain, fog, atmospheric turbulence

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 Active Dust Mote Transmitter
Beam
Steering
Collimating Mirror(s)
Laser Lens
Diode

Two-axis beam steering assembly Active dust mote transmitter

– Beams should have divergence << 1º and be steerable

over a hemisphere.

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 Optical Communication Using
Active Dust Mote Transmitters
Dust
Mote

Base
Station
Transceiver
Dust
Mote
Transmitter Radiant Intensity
Dust
Receiver Light Collection Area Mote

– Base station uses CCD or CMOS camera (up to 1 Mbps)

– Using multi-hop routing, not all dust motes need to have
a line-of-sight path to the base station.

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 Optical Communication Using
Active Dust Mote Transmitters (cont.)

• Minimizing transmitted energy/bit:

– Dust mote should transmit in short bursts at high bit rate
• Link Acquisition
– Need protocols for dust motes to aim their directional
transmitters at other nodes
– Dust motes should execute raster scan using a narrow
(not wide) beam

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 Optical Communication Using
Active Dust Mote Transmitters (cont.)

• Link Non-Reciprocity
– Arises because dust motes use directional transmitters
but non-directional receivers
– May cause a dust mote to waste power transmitting to
nodes unable to receive from it. A dust mote should
transmit only to nodes that acknowledge its
transmissions.
– May cause collisions at dust motes during mote-to-mote
communications.
• Routing
– How to acquire, propagate and update routing
information?

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 Optical Communication Using
Active Dust Mote Transmitters (cont.)

• Pros
– Longer range than passive links (up to about 10 km)
– Higher bit rates than passive links (up to about 1 Mbps)
– With multi-hop, avoids need for every dust mote to have
line-of-sight path to base station
– Utilizes space-division multiplexing
– Only baseband electronics are required
• Cons
– Requires protocol to steer directional transmitters
– Requires higher power than passive transmitter
– Affected by rain, fog, atmospheric turbulence

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 Atmospheric Turbulence
Physical Origin of Scintillation

Atmospheric Eddies

• Enhancing signal detection reliability

– Adaptive optics on imaging receiver
– Spatial receiver diversity (multiple receivers)
– Temporal receiver diversity
» Maximum-likelihood sequence detection based on
Markov model of scintillation process
» Interleaving and forward error correction

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 Summary
– Smart dust motes incorporate sensing, computation,
communications and power in a mm3 volume.
– Free-space optical communication offers advantages in
terms of size, power and network throughput.
– Passive dust mote optical transmitters:
» Use corner-cube retroreflector
» Consume very little power
» Require line-of-sight path to base station
– Active dust mote optical transmitters:
» Use laser and beam-steering mirror
» Enable higher bit rates, longer ranges, multi-hop
routing

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