Large-scale networks of wireless sensors are becoming an
active topic of research. Advances in hardware technology
and engineering design have led to dramatic reductions in
size, power consumption and cost for digital circuitry, wireless
communications and Micro ElectroMechanical Systems
(MEMS). This has enabled very compact, autonomous and
mobile nodes, each containing one or more sensors, computation
and communication capabilities, and a power supply.
The missing ingredient is the networking and applications
layers needed to harness this revolutionary capability into a
complete system. We review the key elements of the emergent
technology of “Smart Dust” and outline the research
challenges they present to the mobile networking and systems
community, which must provide coherent connectivity
to large numbers of mobile network nodes co-located within
a small volume.