Emerging challenges: Mobile networking for "Smart Dust"

Large-scale networks of wireless sensors are becoming increasingly tractabl e. Advances in hardware technology and engineering design have led to drama tic reductions in size, power consumption and cost for digital circuitry, w ireless 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 suppl y. 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 comm unity, which must provide coherent connectivity to large numbers of mobile network nodes co-located within a small volume.