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Electronics Spectra - SMS Lucknow

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<strong>SMS</strong> Institute of Technology, L ucknow<br />

Smart dust<br />

INTRODUCTION<br />

WHAT IS SMART DUST? Smart<br />

dust is a tiny dust size device<br />

with extra-ordinary capabilities. Smart<br />

dust is a hypothetical wireless ne t-<br />

work of tiny microelectromechanical<br />

sensors (MEMS), robots, or dev ices,<br />

that can detect (for example) light,<br />

temperature, or vibration which was<br />

introduced by Kristopher S.J. Pister.<br />

Smart dust combines sensing, c omputing,<br />

wireless communication capabilities<br />

and autonomous power supply<br />

within volume of only few millimeters<br />

and that too at a very low cost. These<br />

devices are proposed to be so small<br />

and light in weight that they can remain<br />

suspended in the environm ent<br />

like an ordinary dust particle . These<br />

properties of Smart Dust will render it<br />

useful in monitoring real world phenomenon<br />

without disturbing the original<br />

process to an observable extends.<br />

Presently the achievable size of Smart<br />

Dust is about 5mm cube, but we hope<br />

that it will eventually be as small as a<br />

speck of dust. Individual sens ors of<br />

smart dust are often referred to as<br />

motes because of their small size.<br />

BACKGROUND<br />

The Defense Advanced Research<br />

Projects Agency (DARPA)<br />

has been funding Smart Dust research<br />

heavily since the late 1990s, seeing<br />

virtually limitless applicatio ns in the<br />

sphere of modern warfare. So far the<br />

research has been promising, w ith<br />

prototype smart dust sensors as small<br />

as 5mm.But further scaling dow n<br />

needs advance technological changes.<br />

We are well aware that costs h ave<br />

been dropping rapidly with technological<br />

innovations, bringing indi vidual<br />

motes down to as little as $50 each,<br />

with hopes of dropping below $1 per<br />

mote in the near future.<br />

STRUCTURE<br />

A smart dust particle is often called<br />

motes. Now one single mote has a<br />

Micro Electro Mechanical System<br />

(MEMS), a semiconductor laser diode,<br />

MEMS beam steering mirror for<br />

active optical transmission, a MEMS<br />

corner cube retro-reflector for passive<br />

optical transmission, an optic al receiver,<br />

a signal processing and control<br />

circuitry, and a power source based<br />

on thick-film batteries and solar cells.<br />

The major challenge is to be faced<br />

when all the functions are to be incorporated<br />

maintaining very lo w<br />

power consumption and optimizi ng<br />

the operating life of the mote. Smart<br />

dust motes consist of a passive optical<br />

transmitter with a micro fabricated<br />

Corner- Cube Retro-Reflector<br />

(CCR). Now this CCR contains three<br />

mutually perpendicular mirror fabricated<br />

of gold- coated poly-silicon. The<br />

CCR reflects any ray of light within a<br />

certain range of angles center ed<br />

about the cube diagonally back to the<br />

source. The power system consists of<br />

a thick-film battery or a solar cell, or<br />

both with a charge-integrating capacitor<br />

(power capacitor). The thick film<br />

battery of sol. or gel V2O3 provides a<br />

backup in darkness, while solar cells<br />

generate energy from sunlight. Depending<br />

on its objective, the design<br />

integrates various sensors, including<br />

light, temperature, vibration, magnetic<br />

field, wind shear, on to the m ote.<br />

Active transmitters make possi ble<br />

peer-to-peer communication between<br />

dust motes, provided the re<br />

exists a line-of-sight path be tween<br />

them.<br />

CORNER CUBE RETRO-<br />

REFLECTOR (CCR)<br />

Department of <strong>Electronics</strong> & Co mmunication<br />

CCR comprises of three mutually<br />

perpendicular mirrors of gold-coated<br />

polysilicon. It has the proper ty that<br />

any incident ray of light is r eflected<br />

back to the source (provided t hat it<br />

is incident within a certain r ange of<br />

angles centered about the cube ’s<br />

body diagonal). If any one of the mirrors<br />

is misaligned, this retro-reflection<br />

property is spoiled. So the micro-fabricated<br />

CCR includes an electr ostatic<br />

actuator that can deflect one of the<br />

mirrors at kilohertz rates. Si nce the<br />

dust mote itself cannot emit light, the<br />

passive transmitter consumes l ittle<br />

power. Using a micro-fabricated CCR,<br />

we can achieve data transmission at a<br />

bit rate up to 1 kilobit per s econd,<br />

and over a range of up to 150 meters,<br />

using a 5 milliwatt illuminating laser.<br />

It should note that CCR-based pas-<br />

Kislaya Srivastava<br />

EC - III year<br />

sive optical links require an uninterrupted<br />

line-of-sight path. Moreover, a<br />

CCR-based passive transmitter is inherently<br />

directional; a CCR can transmit<br />

to the BTS only when the CCR b ody<br />

diagonal happens to point directly toward<br />

the BTS, within a few ten s of<br />

degrees. A passive transmitter can be<br />

made more Omni-directional by employing<br />

several CCRs oriented in different<br />

directions, at the expe nse of<br />

increased dust mote size. If a dust<br />

mote employs only one or a few CCRs,<br />

the lack of Omni-directional transmission<br />

has important consequence on<br />

feasible network routing strategies.<br />

COMMUNICATION<br />

TECHNOLOGIES:<br />

I. Radio Frequency Transmission<br />

II. Optical transmission technique<br />

a) Active Laser based Communication<br />

b) Fiber Optic Communication<br />

I. RADIO FREQUENCY<br />

TRANSMISSION<br />

It is based on the generation,<br />

propagation and detection of electromagnetic<br />

waves with a frequenc y<br />

range from tens of kHz to hund reds<br />

of GHz. It could be used to fu nction<br />

as both the uplink and the downlink.<br />

Since RF transceiver typically consists<br />

of relatively complex circuitry, it is impossible<br />

to achieve the required low<br />

power operation using such an approach<br />

in a smart dust system. When<br />

large numbers of motes are involved<br />

in smart dust, RF links may employ alternative<br />

multiplexing techniq ues:<br />

time, frequency or code-division multiplexing.<br />

Their use leads to modulation,<br />

band pass filtering, demodulation<br />

circuitry, and additional circuitry, all of<br />

which needs to be considered based<br />

on power consumption,etc.<br />

II. Optical Transmission<br />

Technique<br />

The Smart Dust can employ a passive<br />

laser based communication<br />

scheme to establish a bi-direc tional<br />

communication link between dus t<br />

nodes and a base station transceiver<br />

(BST). For downlink communicat ion<br />

(BST to dust), the base station points<br />

a modulated laser beam at a no de.<br />

24 <strong>Electronics</strong> <strong>Spectra</strong>, 2010

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