Univ of California at Berkeley's RFID Smart Dust Program

UCalBerkeley is working on an RFID Smart Dust project to build a self-contained, millimeter-scale sensing and communication platform for a massively distributed sensor network... ...will be around the size of a grain of sand and will contain sensors, computational ability, bi-directional wireless communications, and a power supply, while being inexpensive enough to deploy by the hundreds... ...to build a complete, complex system in a tiny volume using state-of-the art technologies, which will require evolutionary and revolutionary advances in integration, miniaturization, and energy management.

Smart Dust is the innovation of Associate Professor Kris Pister and Professor Randy H. Katz. They are researching this topic at University of California, Berkeley. RFID smart dust is the convergence of three technologies: digital circuitry, wireless communications, and MEMS (Micro ElectroMechanical Systems), which must shape this equipment into a space no more than one or two cubic millimeters in size.

Wireless sensor technologies were explored at a U.S. Department of Commerce Forum on April 1, 2004, addressing the current and potential uses of sensor technologies by both industry and government as well as the public policy implications of widespread deployment.