What is Smart Dust?

Smart dust is also known as Smart Dust. It is a super-miniature sensor with computer function. It consists of a microprocessor, a two-way radio receiver, and software capable of forming a wireless network. ^[1] The inventor of smart dust was Kristofer Pister, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley ^[2] . By placing some dust in a site, they can locate each other, collect data and pass information to the base station ^[1] . If one mote fails to function, the other motes will repair it.

Smart dust

Due to rapid advances in silicon technology and production processes, integrated sensing

Smart dust will also have a series of effects when it provides multiple benefits. In the face of smart dust, personal privacy no longer exists, and every move is monitored. Regardless of whether it is a trade secret or a state secret, it will become increasingly difficult to avoid theft by opponents, making the normal business order a mess. This will be a nightmare for countries confronting each other ^[3]

According to Intel, smart dust is a miniature electro-mechanical sensor (MEMS) capable of transmitting information wirelessly. Although it is small in cost but widely used, it can detect many surrounding environmental parameters, ranging from light intensity changes to vibration energy levels. It can do almost everything; it can collect a large amount of data for calculation and processing, and then use two-way wireless communication devices to integrate these comprehensive information Dust devices are transmitted between them. Hundreds of miniature sensors can also form an intelligent dust system, which can self-organize, self-sustain, and work together to monitor environmental parameter variables such as temperature and humidity of the surrounding environment. The intelligent dust system can be used as a traffic flow monitor in crowded downtown areas; in households, it can monitor the power consumption of various household appliances to avoid peak times; it can also be deployed on the battlefield to track enemy military operations. In addition, from monitoring the physical conditions and activities of patients in hospital wards to inducing abnormal vibrations of industrial equipment to determine manufacturing process defects, the potential commercial application of intelligent dust technology is very large ^[3]

Around 1992, there was a boom in smarts: smart rooms, smart buildings, smart bombs, and so on, so Kristofer Pister of the University of California, Berkeley, remembered the word "smart dust". Pister's substantive research on smart dust began in 1994, and at the same time, research and development of related hardware platforms was also carried out ^[2]

In the first few years of the 20th century, smart dust was a fashionable topic in the technology world. However, in recent years, smart dust has disappeared. The reason is not because of problems in the research direction, but even in terms of today's technology, it is still a difficult challenge to package the sensors, analog / digital circuits, communications, and even power in a 1mm3 space. ^2] .

Although smart dust has a wide range of application prospects, and researchers and commercial developers are eager to promote the application of smart dust technology, there are still several technical difficulties, such as size problems and power supply issues that need to be resolved as soon as possible. The technology is not yet mature, and it is estimated that it will take several years before it can be widely used ^{[4] [6]} .

Researchers have encountered severe challenges in integrating MEMS with other electronic devices into a single chip. The researchers' goal is to shrink the 5mm dust chip to 1mm. Fedder, one of the co-founders of Carnegie Mellon University's MEMS Lab, is trying to solve these problems with the latest manufacturing processes and the most advanced design technologies, but there is still a lot of work to do to make a breakthrough. And this requires outstanding design engineers with outstanding research capabilities to integrate all functions into a single chip. Researchers have been working hard to develop advanced design tools to help engineers finally complete this difficult research task. Because researchers realize that smart dust technology will be widely used and have a significant impact on human society, the value of hard work lies in this. This is why the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funded the study of this technology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1998 ^[5] .

How to power these tiny micromachines is another difficult problem facing designers today. The tests or applications of these systems currently rely on micro batteries. The ideal situation is that in the future, these wireless dust devices can be deployed at will without worrying about power. Some researchers are working on the development of so-called low-power dedicated wiring protocols to enable the transmission of information between dust particles with minimal energy. Over the past two years, the University of California, Berkeley, MIT, and the University of California have begun research on such energy supply issues. A package solution has not been found, but both the power supply and the size of the wireless smart dust are expected to break through. In terms of size, it is possible to integrate several functional semiconductors into one semiconductor within two years. As for power supply, fuel cells studied by UC Berkeley Shad Roundy can extend the working time of smart dust devices. The fuel cell can absorb the energy generated when the surrounding industrial machinery and equipment vibrate, or collect energy from a low-level light source. This technology is expected to break through in a few years ^[5] .