Fully Integrated Radios for Wireless Sensor Networks

In the future, technology will be hidden in the environment and invisible to the user but, at the same time, responsive and adaptive to user interaction and environmental variations [1]. For example, smart buildings will become aware of the presence of people and of their needs: thanks to this, temperature and light conditions will be adapted automatically for the best comfort and optimal power consumption. The realization of such a vision requires a technology that can sense, process and respond to external stimuli, both human and environmental, coming from many spots of a large environment, such as a room, a house or a whole building. An answer to such needs may come from Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs. These are networks that consist of a large number of energy-autonomous nodes deployed into the environment to collect physical data. Each node is equipped with sensors, digital and analog processing units and a radio transceiver [2]. Physical parameters, such as temperature, sound, light conditions, etc., are sensed and processed by each node. The resulting information is transmitted from node to node and propagates through the network, until it is collected by a central data sink or used by the network itself in distributed algorithms. Dense networks, composed of hundreds or thousands of devices, are required to accurately monitor an environment. Consequently, each node must be extremely cheap to limit the cost of the network and make this technology economically feasible. Moreover, the nodes must be small enough to be hidden, in order to be invisible to users and not affect the surrounding environment.

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