Smart Dust: Serving Up the Future

[rtroxel]

Intranets and networks are evolving rapidly today in the R&D departments of various high-tech companies, where Moore's Law rules above all.

The basic trend behind the “new” line of servers and clients is that they are becoming smaller and smaller.

Smart Dust

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley are currently working on the development of "smart dust", or "sensor-laden networked computer nodes that are just cubic millimeters in volume."

According to the EE Times, an online magazine for tech managers: “The smart dust project envisions a complete sensor network node including power supply, processor, sensor and communications mechanisms in a single cubic millimeter.At these dimensions, the nodes would be small and cheap enough to be scattered from aircraft for battlefield monitoring, stirred into house paint to create the ultimate home sensor network or swallowed with your breakfast cereal for health monitoring.”

Smart dust networks could not only be wireless RF, but optical/laser as well, with the silicon particles acting as mirrors. According to Dana Blankenhorn of A-Clue.com:

"Mitel Corp began working on optical chips in 2000....Instead of etching the [optical] fiber itself, or creating chips with new materials, Mitel splits the light with a laser, a mirror and a silicon chip. The reflections either cancel or reenforce various wavelengths, allowing more of hem to be distinguished from each other. Add this system to each end of a fiber line and you increase its data-carrying potential exponentially."

In other words, if light (not electricity or radio waves) is the medium for data transfer, the light can be reflected and refracted in the same way that a prism can split white light into numerous colors of different wave lengths. In the case of networks, silicon "prisms" can split the light in a fibre optic into numerous data channels. Instead of lenses and mirrors, this beam-splitting is done with microscopic circuits etched into small particles of silicon!

Sensor Networks

Sensors are minute work stations the size of dust. Thousands or millions of them can be linked together in a single network, controlled by a server. This is similar to the way in which diskless workstations can be linked together today.

Future versions of the Tiny OS could run on these sensors.

Before we paint too rosy a picture, however, the enlightened consumer might well ask:"What's the catch?"

Well, first of all, these dust-sized "sensors are already stirring up fears of government and corporate intrusion. Billions of tiny tags could track everything from people's shopping patterns to movements of suspected criminals."

Also, like all networks, smart dust networks can be cracked and compromised. Servers can still be brought down or otherwise compromised through back door software. Although security is still being developed for the wireless protocols, the 802.11b and .11g versions can still be hacked. The Wired Equivalency Protocol (WEP) is also known to slow down data transmission, which is why many PDA users don't install it.

Plastic Electronics

According to an article in Business Week, innovative plastics could make even silicon look dated:"researchers worldwide see major new opportunities for information technology in this cheap and pliable alternative to silicon. Their targets range from wall-size television displays to ultra-tiny transistors."

Here is yet another way to create dust-sized workstations:

Dow, Motorola and Xerox have combined to “develop polymer links and printing methods that could spew out circuitry like so much newspaper.That might one day lead to video wallpaper studded with millions of light-emitting specks of plastic.”