History
Although wireless sensor nodes have existed for decades and used for applications as diverse as earthquake measurements to warfare, the modern development of small sensor nodes dates back to the 1998 Smartdust project and the NASA Sensor Webs Project One of the objectives of the Smartdust project was to create autonomous sensing and communication within a cubic millimeter of space. Though this project ended early on, it led to many more research projects. They include major research centres in Berkeley NEST and CENS. The researchers involved in these projects coined the term mote to refer to a sensor node. The equivalent term in the NASA Sensor Webs Project for a physical sensor node is pod, although the sensor node in a Sensor Web can be another Sensor Web itself. Physical sensor nodes have been able to increase their capability in conjunction with Moore's Law. The chip footprint contains more complex and lower powered microcontrollers. Thus, for the same node footprint, more silicon capability can be packed into it. Nowadays, motes focus on providing the longest wireless range (dozens of km), the lowest energy consumption (some uA) and the easiest development process for the user.
Read more about this topic: Sensor Node
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)