Smart Dust devices are small wireless microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS) that can detect everything from light to vibrations. It is a tiny dust size device with extraordinary capabilities. It encompasses a nano-structured silicon sensor that can spontaneously assemble, orient sense, and report on their local environment. This new technology combines sensing, computing, wireless communication capabilities, and autonomous power supply within the volume of only a few millimeters. It is very hard to detect the presence of the Smart Dust and it is even harder to get rid of them once deployed. Smart Dust is useful in monitoring real-world phenomena without disturbing the original process.
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The new trend of the 21st century is to provide the best adaptive features to the user in small packages as much as possible. This same trend is being followed in electronics technology and the enhanced features are being provided in smaller and smaller electronic devices. An example of this technology trend is electronic motes. These are so small and light in weight that they can remain suspended in the environment like an ordinary dust particle. Even the air currents can also move them in the direction of flow. The main features of motes are:
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Smart Dust motes are run by microcontrollers. These microcontrollers consist of tiny sensors for recording various types of data. Timers are used to run these sensors. These sensors do the job of collecting the data. The data obtained are stored in its memory for further interpretations. It can also be sent to the base controlling stations.
CCR, which comprises three mutually perpendicular mirrors of gold-coated polysilicon, has the property that any incident ray of light is reflected back to the source provided that is incident within a certain range of angles centered about the cube’s body diagonal. The microfabricated CCR includes an electrostatic actuator that can deflect one of the mirrors at the kilohertz rate. Hence, the external light source can be transmitted back in the form of the modulated signal at kilobits per second. It can transmit to the bus only when the CCR body diagonal happens to point directly towards the bits, within a few tens of degrees
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Although a passive transmitter can be made more omnidirectional by employing several CCR”s oriented in different directions, at the expense of increased dust mote size.
There are the following main advantages to using Smart Dust.
For an industry:
For farmers or farming purpose:
For factories and plants:
For an office environment:
There are many other smart dust applications apart from these.
Disadvantages of Smart Dust
There are a number of advantages of Smart Dust. But it also has a negative side too. Although the disadvantages seem much minor as compared with their advantages. But still, it is important to take them into consideration. These are:
One of the major disadvantages of Smart Dust is the privacy issue for organizations using it. Detecting even the most subtle changes, Smart Dust leaves little to the imagination. Smart Dust is a miniature sensors. They can record whatever you want them to record. Because this new technology is so small, people are scared that they would be spied on by companies.
That brings the main disadvantage to any company that would use Smart Dust. They would have to advise everybody who is part of the study or experiment. It could also bring ethical issues. For example, which employees would you let analyze the data that the sensors are giving and what information would they have access to. Privacy is likely going to be an ongoing and difficult debate in the coming years, and Smart Dust may be right at its center.
Although Smart Dust is gaining popularity in many fields, it remains costly to implement such a system in an organization. The little chips themselves saw their prices go down by a lot in recent years, however, implementing all the satellites and other elements needed may cost a company a lot of money.
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