• Overview
• Wireless Sensor Networks
• Time Synchronized
  Mesh Protocol

Overview

Background

Information technology has resulted in huge gains in efficiency and productivity by providing greater awareness, control, and integration of business transactions and processes.  The next wave of the information revolution will be even larger in its impact – providing greater awareness, control, and integration of information about the physical world. 

Wireless sensor networks were originally developed in the mid 1990’s at university research institutions including the University of California, Berkeley, for defense and intelligence applications.  As the research world rallied around the concept of “Smart Dust” (a term originally coined by Kris Pister, a Professor at UC Berkeley and founder and CTO of Dust Networks), universities and research institutions worldwide started to take a closer look at the impact of ubiquitous sensing and control. 

Opportunity

As companies strive to increase efficiency, reduce downtime, enhance comfort, and improve safety, the ability to measure and control the physical world has become more and more critical.

Wireless technology promises to revolutionize traditional wired sensor network applications such as HVAC systems and industrial networks.  The economic savings in these applications often exceed 50% of the total deployment cost.  In addition, wireless technology is enabling brand new applications that have never before been possible or economical.  By providing a bridge between information systems and the physical world, wireless sensor networks are providing new opportunities for companies to increase efficiency, reduce downtime, enhance comfort, and improve safety.

Technology

Wireless technology is becoming ubiquitous in many aspects of our lives – from cellular phones to Wi-Fi computers and hotspots.  The next wave of wireless technology that will have a significant impact on the world will be wireless sensor networks.

Many consumer wireless products are targeted towards higher and higher bandwidth.  Wireless sensor networks (WSNs), on the other hand, are mostly used in low-power, low-bandwidth applications.  While a cellular phone might go for a week between charging, a wireless sensor is often required to live 5-10 years or more before changing the battery.  And while we all get a chuckle out of the “Can you hear me now?” cell phone advertisements on TV, wireless sensor networks must be reliable enough for long-term unmanned deployments for mission critical systems.

Wired sensor networks exist today in a wide variety of applications in industrial and building automation. However, wired sensor networks are expensive to install and maintain, and limited in reach.  At the same time, the promise of a wireless solution has been elusive because of difficult technical challenges associated with reliability, power consumption, and the costs and complexity of network installation and expansion. 

Traditional point-to-point wireless networks are not adequate to solve these challenges.  They are prone to failure when faced with the demanding and dynamic Radio-Frequency (RF) landscape which is crowded with transmissions from cordless telephones, Wi-Fi networks, and common business equipment such as bar-code scanners and person-to-person radios. Likewise, WSN designed for consumer-grade applications such as home automation, PC peripherals, and remote controls are simply inadequate for industrial applications and other harsh RF environments.

Imagine, however, that a company could measure, manage and refine data from the physical world through a wireless network with the same reliability expected from a wired solution – and at a significantly lower cost.  Data from the physical world, including temperature, lighting, humidity, energy consumption, and movement, could then be married to the world of industrial systems and IT. 

With Dust Networks’ technological advances in wireless mesh networking, seamlessly integrating wireless sensors into existing network infrastructures can enable a whole host of monitoring and control applications.

Dust Networks’ SmartMesh family of embedded wireless products utilize TSMP (Time Synchronized Mesh Protocol) allowing OEM customers to meet the demand for low-power, low-bandwidth, high-reliability applications.

To learn more about wireless sensor networks click here.

To learn more about TSMP click here or download the TSMP White Paper.