A critical evaluation on design and development of smart dust sensor for mechatronics applications

Abstract

In the advanced world that we have today, it is important for consumers to have devices that are smaller in size and are easily available, and should be powerful in terms of specifications and performance. Also, there is a demand for the industries to miniaturize the parts as smaller as possible in order to meet the consumer requirements. A sensor is a key element in any automated system/device as it senses the physical changes in the environment and processes this data. Thus, paving way for smart sensors which have revolutionized the tech industry by their ability to consist an entire data conversion and processing units on a single chip or the System on Chip (SoC). The presented review paper describes about the research survey performed on sensors, transducers, and also on the evolving smart sensor technology which helped in innovating the state-of-the-art sensor technology such as the smart dust. A detailed study on the smart dust sensor technology and its capabilities to sense physical phenomena such as sound, vibration, temperature, light, magnetism, acceleration, position, stress, humidity, and chemical traces has been analyzed. At present, the smart dust sensor technology is under critical research, testing, and prototyping process. Furthermore, the future scope of the smart dust or mote technology is discussed by the describing the need for these sensors in various fields and also by showing the graphical representation of the Gartner’s hype cycle. The paper concludes by presenting the important aspects of a smart dust sensor, its usability, necessity, and also estimating the impact of this sensor technology in the rapid advancement of the tech industry.