A Study on Smart Dust (MOTE) Technology
V.Veena Madhuri , Dr Syed Umar , P.Veeraveni
Department of ECM,
KL University, A.P., INDIA.
Abstract— A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of
spatially distributed autonomous sensors to monitor physical
or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound,
pressure, etc. and to cooperatively pass their data through the
network to a main location. The WSN is built of "nodes" -
from a few to several hundreds or even thousands, where each
node is connected to one (or sometimes several) sensors. A
sensor node, also known as a mote (chiefly in North America),
is a node which is capable of performing some processing,
gathering sensory information and communicating with other
connected nodes in the network. A mote is a node but a node is
not always a mote. We compare and contrast the selected
WSN motes under these different headings, highlighting the
individual mote’s performance under each category.
Keywords— Wireless Sensor Networks, Middleware, Mobile
Agents, Motes, smart dust.
I. INTRODUCTION
A wireless sensor network consists of spatially distributed
autonomous sensors to monitor physical or environmental
conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure,
motion or pollutants and to cooperatively pass their data
through the network to a main location. The development of
wireless sensor networks was motivated by military
applications such as battlefield surveillance; today such
networks are used in many industrial and consumer
applications, such as industrial process monitoring and
control, machine health monitoring, and so on. The WSN is
built of "nodes" – from a few to several hundreds or even
thousands [1], where each node is connected to one (or
sometimes several) sensors. Each such sensor network node
has typically several parts: a radio transceiver with an
internal antenna or connection to an external antenna, a
microcontroller, an electronic circuit for interfacing with
the sensors and an energy source, usually a battery or an
embedded form of energy harvesting. A sensor node might
vary in size from that of a shoebox down to the size of a
grain of [2]. The motes function within the network and
typically fulfill one of two purposes: - either data-logging,
processing (and/or transmitting) sensor information from
the environment, or acting as a gateway in the adhoc
wireless network formed by all the sensors to pass data
back to a (usually unique) collection point.Fig1 shows one
such network using modes instead of sensor nodes. In this
paper, we present a review of several current WSN motes,
compared and contrasted under a number of different
parameters. These parameters are processor used, expected
lifetime, protocols, cost, applications and their pros and
cons. These motes are also compared on the basis of total
power consumed by different modules of the motes.
Fig1: use of motes in wireless sensor networks
II. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
In this section we provide an overview of the motes on
which our study is based. The parameters on which these
motes are reviewed are divided in five sections in this
paper. These are processor and memory, protocols used,
cost of motes, power consumption and their applications.
The pros and cons of each mote are also listed.
The following motes will be discussed:
Rene -The Berkley Rene motes were developed in
1999 by CrossBow Technologies.
MicaZ-It is a third generation mote family from
CrossBow Technology used for enabling low
power wireless sensor networks.
IRIS-It is a latest wireless sensor network module
from Crossbow Technologies. It includes several
improvements over the Mica2 / MicaZ family of
products. This mote features several new
capabilities that enhance the overall functionalities
of sensor network projects.
SHIMMER-SHIMMER (Sensing Health with
Intelligence, Modularity, Mobility, and
Experimental Reusability) is a wireless sensor
platform designed to support wearable
applications. It is currently available from Real
Time Ltd.
TelosB-Wireless sensor modules developed from
research carried out at UC Berkeley and currently
available in similar form factors from both Sentilla
and CrossBow Technology.
Sun SPOT: - The Sun “Small Programmable
Object Technology” (SPOT) is a wireless sensor
network mote from Sun Microsystems.
LOTUS-The Lotus is an advanced wireless sensor
node platform. The Lotus platform features several
new capabilities that enhance the overall
functionality of MEMSIC’s wireless sensor
networking products.
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ISSN:2231-0711
Available online @ www.ijcset.net 124
The fig 2 shows all the above mentioned various kinds
of motes.
Fig2: Types of motes
III. REVIEW
III.I Processor
Basically the processor is built on the microcontroller
which reads sensor data and makes the data ready for
transfer. In other words, processor is a core module for the
calculation in a wireless sensor node. This part of the node
helps to control the task scheduling, to calculate energy, to
define communication protocols, to make suitable
coordination, for data manipulation and data transfer. The
processor is therefore the most important part, Table 1
reviews the microprocessors used for each of the respective
motes reviewed [3]. Table 2 provides information on
available on-board memory, ADC, power consumption and
serial communication of these processors for each mote
platform [4] [5] [6].There is a wide variation here in
available memory sizes and types
for the different motes, possibly a reflection of their
different application spaces [7] [8]. In addition to these onboard memory capabilities, some sensor nodes now also
allow the option of saving data to additional external
Non-volatile memory. TABLE 1 : Microprocessor Used
TABLE 2 : Microprocessor Specifications
III.II Pros And Cons:
Pros and cons of the reviewed 7 motes are listed in table 3.
TABLE 3 : Pros and Cons
IV PROTOCOLS & COST
The IEEE 802.15.4[9] protocol has been adopted as a
communication standard for low data rate, low power
consumption and low cost Wireless Sensor Networks. This
protocol is quite flexible for a wide range of applications if
appropriate tuning of its parameters is carried out. Most of
the mote platforms use this standard for communication
between the motes. Rene, IRIS, TelosB, SunSPOT and
LOTUS are all IEEE 802.15.4 compliant motes. MicaZ is
IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee compliant and SHIMMER is both
IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth compliant, RENE mote uses
2.4GHz, 868MHz or 916MHz frequency band. IRIS and
TelosB use 2405 to 2480 MHz band and MicaZ,
SHIMMER TelosB and SunSPOT use 2400 to 2483.5 MHz
band for communication. This band is called ISM band [10]
[11]. For the 7 sensor motes reviewed, current pricing
information for each mote is as shown in table 4.
TABLE 4 : Cost per Node
V POWER CONSUMPTION
For the 7 separate sensor nodes in this paper, power supply
options are as follows:-
Rene:-These sensor nodes are typically powered from an
external battery pack containing 2 AA batteries. The cells
use an operating voltage of 2.7V. Total active power
consumed is 24mW.
MicaZ: - The MicaZ sensor nodes use the same physical
battery configuration as the TelosB boards i.e. 2 AA
batteries in an attached battery pack. Voltage requirement is
minimum 2.5V and total active power is 33mW.
IRIS: - IRIS uses 2 AA batteries similar to MicaZ. AA cells
may be used in the operating range of 2.7 to 3.3V DC.
SHIMMER: - the SHIMMER mote is typically powered by
a 250mAh battery. Supported configurations include
Lithium- Ion/Lithium-Poly cell chemistry and lithium coin
cells or alkaline batteries. The SHIMMER design also
includes a Texas Instruments BQ-24080 Smart Li Charger
for battery management.
TelosB: - TelosB boards are typically powered from an
external battery pack containing 2 AA batteries. AA cells
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may be used in the operating range of 2.1 to 3.6V DC,
however the voltage must be at least 2.7V when
programming the microcontroller flash or external flash.
Total active power is 3mW.
Sun SPOT: - Sun SPOT motes are powered from an
integrated rechargeable onboard battery. The SunSPOT
mote PCB typically uses a 3.7V rechargeable 750 mAh
lithium-ion battery, nominally operating with a 30 uA deep
sleep mode.
LOTUS: - These sensor nodes are typically powered from
an external battery pack containing 2 AA batteries. AA
cells may be used in the operating range of 2.7 to 3.3V DC.
Of the 7 motes considered here, only 2 use rechargeable
battery packs, the SHIMMER mote and the Sun SPOT
mote. The SHIMMER is supplied with a rechargeable
250mAh battery while the more processor and power
intensive SunSPOT typically uses a 750mAh Li-Ion battery.
VI APPLICATIONS
The recent advance in Micro-electro-mechanical system
(MEMS) and wireless approach promises advantage over
the traditional sensing methods in many ways: large- scale,
densely deployment not only extends the spatial coverage
and achieves higher resolution, but also increases the faulttolerance and robustness of the system, the ad-hoc nature
make it even more attractive in military applications and
other risk-associated applications, such as habitat
monitoring and environmental observation. Rene motes are
used for asset monitoring, climate control and surveillance.
MicaZ ,LOTUS and IRIS motes have applications in indoor
building monitoring and security, acoustic, video, vibration
and other high speed sensor data and large scale sensor and
large scale sensor networks (1000+ points).LOTUS motes
are also used for condition based maintenance and
industrial monitoring and analysis. TelosB provides a
platform for low power research development and other
wireless sensor network experimentation. SHIMMER
motes have medical applications and used in sensing speed
of vehicles say vehicle tracking. SunSPOT motes have
military applications and are used in swarm intelligence and
rocket launch monitoring.
VI.I The In-Motes EYE Application
Last year more than 2 million motorists were caught
speeding on camera, raising £120m a year in revenue for
so-called 'Safety Camera Partnerships’ comprising police,
magistrate councils and road safety groups. Speed cam-eras
have boomed on British roads from a handful a decade ago
to 3 300 fixed sites and 3 400 mobile devices today. In
October 2006 a massive flaw in a new generation of speed
cameras was reported by Daily Mail [11] allowing
motorists to avoid speeding fines in some of the busiest UK
motorways by simply changing lanes. The Home Office
admitted in public that drivers could avoid being caught the
by hi-tech ‘SPECS’ cameras,Figure 3 which calculate a
car’s average speed over a long distance.
The cameras were designed to catch motorists who simply
slow down in front of a camera, case of the Gatso speed
cameras, and then drive above the speed limit until they
reach the next one. The loophole in the software is located
when a motorist changes lanes as it is unable to calculate if
the average speed is above the limits due to the fact that the
fixed points of measurement need to be in a straight line.
Although the software was designed to improve the road
safety, by measuring a driver's average speed between two
fixed points which can be many miles apart the loophole
meant that drivers may actually in-crease the risk of
accidents by continually switching lanes. Since then, an
update of the software took place to correct this problem
but as Mr. Collins, a Home Office representative stated
recently “There are configurations when (a speeding vehicle)
would not be picked up, if it's gone from lane one to lane
three between cameras.”
Figure 3. The SPEC road cameras with the problematic software.
VI.II The RoboMote Application
The ability of a sensor node to move itself or to otherwise
influence its location will be critical in sensor networks.
The possibility of combining computation, sensing,
communication and actuation to not only passively monitor
the environment (like static sensor networks) We believe
that augmenting static sensor networks with few mobile
nodes immensely benefits the functionality of the sensor
network and helps solve many of the design problems of
static sensor networks. RoboMotes are small (less than
0.00005m3
) inexpensive (less than $150 each) mobile
robots. Each robot features a wireless network interface
(the "Mote" part), two speed and direction controlled
wheels with optical encoders for odometery; a solar cell for
"always on" networks; a compass for direction; and bump
sensors and infra-red sensors for obstacle avoidance.
RoboMotes sit at the intersection of robotics, ad-hoc
networking, and distributed artificial intelligence. They
allow research that has previously been either too costly,
required too much space, or been technologically out of
reach. Because the RoboMote platform itself is small and
inexpensive, it is now practical to implement much larger
robot networks. The primary motivation for a RoboMote
network is research in always on dynamic self reconfigurable sensor networks. Figure 4 shows the robomote
used in various applications.
Figure4:The RoboMote Application
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VI.III The Extreme Scale Mote (Xsm)
This new mote is an integrated application-specific sensor
network node for investigating reliable, large-scale, and
long-lived surveillance applications. The improved
reliability stems from hardware and firmware support for
recovering from Byzantine programs. Large-scale operation
is better supported through an improved hardware user
interface and remote tasking. Long-lived operation is
realized through the use of adaptive low-power sensors and
a hierarchical and event-driven signal processing
architecture. The motivating surveillance application is the
detection, classification, and tracking of civilians, soldiers,
and vehicles. Performed under the aegis of the DARPA
NEST Extreme Scale 2004 Minitask, a fundamental goal of
this work is to demonstrate operation of a wireless sensor
network at the heretofore unprecedented and extreme scale
of 10,000 nodes occupying a 10km2 area and for a duration
approaching 1000 hours. Operations at such scales make it
impossible to manually adjust parameters, repeatedly
replace batteries, or individually program sensor nodes.
These severe constraints were selected to “kick the crutches
out” and had the intended effect of elevating to first-class
status several factors, such as reliability, usability, and
lifetime, which might otherwise have become afterthoughts.
Another very real constraint was cost since every decision
was amplified by a multiple of 10,000. Some of the more
innovative ideas did not survive budgetary scrutiny and
were not included in either the XSM design or in this work.
Figure 5: Top view of XSM (version 2).
The XSM, shown in Figure 5, integrates a platform with a
suite of sensors. In the TinyOS community, “platform” has
come to mean the microcontroller, memory, and radio
subsystems, as well as supporting hardware like power
management or timekeeping but not the sensing and signal
conditioning hardware or packaging. In keeping with this
tradition, this section discusses the processor, radio, and
supporting subsystems.
Sensor nodes for intrusion detection may experience
diverse and hostile environments with wind, rain, snow,
flood, heat, cold, terrain, and canopy. The sensor packaging
is responsible for protecting the delicate electronics from
these elements. In addition, the packaging can affect the
sensing and communications processes either positively or
negatively. Figure 5.1 shows the XSM enclosure and how
the electronics and batteries are mounted. The XSM
enclosure is a commercial-off-the shelf plastic product that
has been modified to suit our needs. Since the enclosure
plastic is constructed from a material that is opaque to
infrared, each side has a cutout for mounting a PIRtransparent window. Similarly, a number of holes on each
side allow acoustic signals to pass through. A waterresistant windscreen mounted inside the enclosure sensor
reduces wind noise and protects the electronics from light
rain. A telescoping antenna is mounted to the circuit board
and protrudes through the top of the enclosure. A rubber
plunger makes the RESET and USER buttons easily
accessible yet unexposed.
Figure 5.1: This model shows how the XSM electronics and
batteries are mounted in the enclosure.
VII THE FUTURE
In March, 2003, researchers managed to cram all of the
parts needed for a mote onto a single chip less than 3
millimeters on each side. The total size is about 5 square
millimeters, meaning that you could fit more than a dozen
of these chips onto a penny.
The chip contains all of the components found in a mote: a
CPU, memory, an A/D converter for reading sensor data
and a radio transmitter. To complete the package you attach
the sensor(s), a battery and an antenna. The cost of the chip
will be less than a dollar when it is mass produced.
V.Veena Madhuri et al | IJCSET |March 2013 | Vol 3, Issue 3, 124-128 ISSN:2231-0711 Available online @ www.ijcset.net 127
CONCLUSION
This paper has presented a review of currently available
mote technologies. For these different motes, a series of 5
categories have been considered, namely processor and
memory, protocols, cost, power consumption, applications
and their pros and cons. In terms of individual observations,
we have found that the Sun SPOT motes are the best option
if processing power and a high computational overhead are
envisaged in the application requirements. SHIMMER
motes, with their small form factor and integrated 3-
dimensional accelerometer sensors, are best suited for
wearable applications such as health monitoring, MicaZ and
TelosB are the cheapest amongst all and can be used where
low cost is a concern. IRIS motes have an increased range
so can be used where long distance communication is
required. In-Motes EYE application which is an agent
based real time In-Motes application developed for sensing
acceleration variations in an environment. The application
was tested in a prototype area, road alike, for a period of
four months. We presented the robomote, a mobile robotic
test bed for mobile sensor network experiments. We also
presented two case studies where the robomote was used to
experimentally validate algorithms designed for next
generation mobile sensor networks.
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