Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The long-term objective of the research proposed in this grant is the realization of wireless sensing and computing devices (""motes"") less than 100 cubic-mm in volume. The scale considered for these devices suggests that they could form ultra dense networks consisting on the order of 100,000 motes. Networks of this size are envisioned as distributed computing devices directly interfaced to our environment and capable of influencing it to our needs. Reducing mote size increases the size of the network they can form and also increases the diversity of spaces to which this network can be introduced. Today, motes displace roughly 100,000 cubic-mm and form networks of around 100 elements. At present this technology has already been demonstrated as a useful tool for environmental monitoring, surveillance, and health care. In the short-term, this research aims at two hardware innovations very important to the realization of useful motes. Firstly, an ultra-low-power microelectronic wireless communicator will be designed. Radios are fundamental to the formation of a mote network but today they constitute their most power hungry function (compared to sensing and computation). Reducing the power consumption of the radio can lead to improvements in other domains such as size, computational complexity, etc. The second short-term objective targets a mote facility of emerging interest to designers: the ability of the device to physically propel itself. Specifically, this research seeks to realize a specialized computer capable of guiding a mobile mote through space. This ""path planner"" is essentially a novel nonlinear dynamical controller readily amenable to implementation using analog circuits. This path-planner will be implemented as a reconfigurable low-power analog computer on a single chip.