Definition — What is smart dust?

The term Smart Dust is also known as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Professor Kristofer Pister (University of California, Berkeley) coined the term smart dust in 1997 to describe his wireless array of sensor nodes. The smart dust technology consists of tiny size wireless sensors, these sensors generally range from 20 micrometers up to millimeter size, it's smaller than a rice grain. Smart dust sensors are also known as "motes". This device consists of sensors, bi-directional wireless functionality, computational ability, and power supply. It is very hard to detect the presence of smart dust and it is even harder to get rid of them once deployed. Smart dust is useful in monitoring real-world phenomena without disturbing the original process. They can monitor everything on the planet – light, vibration, temperature, etc. In the late 90's the smart dust technology was conceived by a US military defense research project, as a detection strategy on the battlefield. It was imagined that smart dust motes could provide real-time information on their environment in a battle situation. Due to their minuscule size, they would be almost impossible for an enemy to detect, either scattered on the ground or traveling freely through the air with the wind.