Dust Networks Demonstrates Self-Powered IPV6 Wireless Sensor Network

Dust Networks demonstrated a SmartMesh IP 6LoWPAN wireless network running on harvested energy at the IDTechEx Wireless Sensor Network & RTLS Summit in Munich, Germany, June 21 – 22, 2011.

For the first time anywhere, all of the nodes in the network, including the IPv6 routing nodes, ran on energy harvested from a variety of devices, including the Micropelt TE-Power thermogenerator and the Cymbet EnerChip CC rechargeable solid state battery trickle-charged by a small off-the-shelf daylight powered solar collector.

“The SmartMesh product family provides a unique convergence with energy harvesting because all of their mesh network nodes can run on harvested energy,” said Burkhard Habbe, vice president of business development for Micropelt GmbH. “With the further decreased power requirements of Dust’s new SmartMesh IP technology, we can now run even more applications on thermoharvesters at rather low gradients, eliminating both wires and battery maintenance.”

“By combining EnerChip solid state energy storage solutions with Dust Network’s Eterna technology, Cymbet’s customers are able to deploy completely self-powered wireless sensor networks,” said Steve Grady, vice president of marketing for Cymbet Corporation. “The overall power requirement is so much lower than with competing wireless products that this is a maintenance-free, extremely compact, eco-friendly networking option.”

“The practical impact of Dust’s focus on low power 802.15.4 SoCs and networking is evident in this multi-vendor demonstration of self-powered wireless sensing” said Brenda Glaze, vice president of sales and marketing for Dust Networks. “With no wires to install and no batteries to change, the initial and on-going costs of installation and maintenance are slashed.”