[117142] in Cypherpunks
[crisp@rambus.com: Dust can really "bug" you]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Emery)
Fri Aug 27 03:13:27 1999
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 02:47:16 -0400
From: Dave Emery <die@die.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message-ID: <19990827024715.L9228@die.com>
Mail-Followup-To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Reply-To: Dave Emery <die@die.com>
----- Forwarded message from Richard Crisp <crisp@rambus.com> -----
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 16:15:48 -0700
To: die@pig.die.com
From: Richard Crisp <crisp@rambus.com>
Subject: Dust can really "bug" you
from
http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990828/newsstory2.html
Dust bugs
Duncan Graham-Rowe
CLEANLINESS FREAKS have a new rationale for their pathological hatred of
dust--it could soon be spying on them.
Packed full of sensors, lasers and communications transceivers, particles
of "smart dust" are being designed to communicate with one another. They
could be used for a range of applications from weather monitoring to spying.
The tiny "motes" are being developed at the University of California,
Berkeley, as part of a programme to produce the smallest possible devices
that have a viable way of communicating with each other.
Each mote is made up of a number of microelectromechanical systems, or
MEMS, wired up to form a very simple computer. At present each mote is 5
millimetres long, but Kris Pister, one of the developers, says that in
future they could be small enough to remain suspended in air, buoyed by the
currents, sensing and communicating for hours.
The latest version (see Diagram) not only has a thick-film battery powering
it but also a solar cell to recharge it. "This remarkable package has the
ability to sense and communicate, and is self-powered," says Randy Katz, a
communications engineer on the project. He presented the latest work at
last week's Mobicom99 mobile computing meeting in Seattle.
MEMS are made using the same photolithographic techniques as integrated
circuits, so once perfected they should be easy to mass-produce. Patterns
are etched out of a silicon wafer to create structures such as optical
mirrors or tiny engines.
Each mote in a smart-dust system will need to survive on extremely low
power, while being able to communicate kilobits of data per second. To this
end, says Katz, the team has designed motes that shut down parts of
themselves when they are not being used.
The latest challenge has been to devise a system that enables the motes to
communicate. Katz and his colleagues decided to use optical transceivers
because of their low energy demand compared with radio communications.
According to Pister they have already shown that they can monitor the dust
21 kilometres across San Francisco Bay. "There's no way you're going to get
that kind of range except with optical devices," he says.
"The base station may actually reside in a hand-held unit, much like a pair
of binoculars," says Katz. This would allow for simultaneous viewing of the
scene from afar while superimposing any measured data on the image. He adds
that this approach could be especially useful for hazardous applications
such as detecting chemical weapons or sending the dust into space.
The next task is to build distributed intelligence into the dust to produce
"swarm behaviour"
>From New Scientist, 28 August 1999
Subscribe to New Scientist
Richard Crisp
Rambus Inc
2465 Latham St
Mountain View, Ca. 94040
crisp@rambus.com
650 944 7832 direct
650 944 8000 main line
650 944 8080 fax
Rambus Confidential Information MAY be contained in this Email
----- End forwarded message -----
--
Dave Emery N1PRE, die@die.com DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass.
PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2 5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18
