Dust Networks, Inc. is an American company specializing in the design and manufacture of

wireless sensor networks Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) refer to networks of spatially dispersed and dedicated sensors that monitor and record the physical conditions of the environment and forward the collected data to a central location. WSNs can measure environmental c ...

for industrial applications including process monitoring,

condition monitoring Condition monitoring (colloquially, CM) is the process of monitoring a parameter of condition in machinery (vibration, temperature etc.), in order to identify a significant change which is indicative of a developing fault. It is a major component o ...

, asset management,

Environment, Health and Safety Environment (E), health (H) and safety (S), EHS is an acronym for the set that studies and implements the practical aspects of protecting the environment and maintaining health and safety at occupation. In simple terms it is what organizations must ...

(EHS) monitoring and

power management Power management is a feature of some electrical appliances, especially copiers, computers, computer CPUs, computer GPUs and computer peripherals such as monitors and printers, that turns off the power or switches the system to a low-power st ...

. They were acquired by Linear Technology, Inc in December 2011, which in turn was acquired by Analog Devices, Inc in 2017. The Dust Networks product team operates in the IoT Networking Platforms group of Analog Devices. Dust Networks works with industry and standards groups such as

WirelessHART WirelessHART within telecommunications and computing, is a wireless sensor networking technology. It is based on the Highway Addressable Remote Transducer Protocol (HART). Developed as a multi-vendor, interoperable wireless standard, WirelessHA ...

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...

and

IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...

to help drive the adoption of

interoperable Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader def ...

wireless sensor network Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) refer to networks of spatially dispersed and dedicated sensors that monitor and record the physical conditions of the environment and forward the collected data to a central location. WSNs can measure environmental c ...

ing products.

Company history

In 1997, Kristofer S. J. Pister, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, conceived of and started the Smart Dust project with

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Ad ...

funding.

Smart Dust

The Smart Dust project attempted to demonstrate that a complete sensor/communication system could be made of sensors one cubic millimeter in size. This involved advances in miniaturization, integration, and energy management. The project focus was independent of any particular sensor, and looked at both commercial and military applications including: * Defense-related sensor networks such as battlefield surveillance, treaty monitoring, transportation monitoring, and scud hunting. * Virtual keyboard sensors: by attaching miniature remotes on each fingernail, accelerometers could then sense the orientation and motion of each fingertip, and communicate this data to a computer in a wristwatch. * Inventory control: by placing miniature sensors on each object in the inventory system (product package, carton, pallet, truck warehouse, internet), each component could "talk" to the next component in the system. This evolved into today's RFID inventory control systems. * Product quality monitoring: temperature and humidity monitoring of perishables such as meat, produce, and dairy. * Impact, vibration and temperature monitoring of consumer electronics, for failure analysis and diagnostic information, e.g. monitoring the vibration of bearings to detect frequency signatures that may indicate imminent failure. The project led to the founding of Dust Networks, to provide commercial applications of the above.

Timeline

* July 2002: Dust Networks founded by Pister, Tod Dykstra, Rob Conant and Brett Warneke * February 2004: Completes $7 million Series A financing from

Foundation Capital Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley. The firm was founded in 1995, and in 2012 managed more than $2.4 billion in investment capital. History Foundation Capital was founded in 1995. The firm raised its sevent ...

, Institutional Venture Partners and

In-Q-Tel In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in high-tech companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with ...

* July 2004: First product delivered - SmartMesh shipping * February 2005: Completes $22 million Series B financing from Crescendo Ventures, Cargill Ventures and prior investors * March 2005: Launches products based on IEEE 802.15.4 standard in the 2.4 GHz

ISM band The ISM radio bands are portions of the radio spectrum reserved internationally for industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) purposes, excluding applications in telecommunications. Examples of applications for the use of radio frequency (RF) ener ...

* June 2006: Launches SmartMesh-XT wireless sensor networking system optimized for industrial applications * September 2007: WirelessHART standard ratified * October 2007: SmartMesh IA-500 family of WirelessHART standards-based systems announced * July 2008: Launches initiative focused on the use of Internet Protocol (IP) networking in urban infrastructure, building automation, utility metering, and other wireless sensor networking applications * December 2011: Dust Networks is acquired by

Linear Technology Linear Technology Corporation was an American semiconductor company that designed, manufactured and marketed high performance analog integrated circuits. Applications for the company's products included telecommunications, cellular telephones, ne ...

* 2017: Linear Technology is acquired by Analog Devices

Technology

Wireless sensor networks attempt to increase transmission reliability and quickly adapt should the transmission fail and automatically route around failed links. This requires embedded networking intelligence that establishes, maintains and utilizes redundant

multi-hop routing Multi- hop routing (or multihop routing) is a type of communication in radio networks in which network coverage area is larger than radio range of single nodes. Therefore, to reach some destination a node can use other nodes as relays. Since the ...

from source to destination. Dust Networks implements full-mesh networks, sometimes referred to as ‘mesh-to-the-edge’, which provides redundant routing to the edge of the network. In a full-mesh network every device has the same routing capabilities and is able to ‘decide’ where it belongs in the routing structure based on what other nodes it can communicate with, its proximity to the network gateway, and its traffic load. This allows for self-forming and self-healing. The multi-chip modules used to drive these networks are divided into 'gateways' and 'motes' (or mote modules). Gateways then tie back into larger networks used to make decisions within large industrial plants (oil refineries, chemical plants, produce facilities, etc.). The company has evolved from using a proprietary protocol called

TSMP TSMP, an acronym for Time Synchronized Mesh Protocol, was developed by Dust Networks as a communications protocol for self-organizing networks of wireless devices called ''motes''. TSMP devices stay synchronized to each other and communicate in tim ...

(Time Synchronized Mesh Protocol), to WirelessHART to launching an Internet Protocol-based initiative, in support of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), focused on the use of IP networking in urban infrastructure, building automation, utility metering, and other wireless sensor networking applications.

References

Smart Dust Future at Nanowerk.com

External links