A communication infrastructure for smart environments: a position article

With today's state-of-the-art technology, miniature sensors and actuators can be manufactured and integrated with electronics onto extremely small footprint devices. Such devices could be embedded into different platforms, creating a highly controllable, supportive, and cooperative environment. Applications of this technology can easily be envisioned in nearly every aspect of our life: in the workplace, at home, in a supermarket, in a department store, in a car, on the battlefield, and so on. Of course, to realize this vision, a network is necessary that enables communication among these devices. Since the main characteristics of these devices are that their power supply is extremely restricted and the span of the network is limited, conventional algorithms and protocols need to be adapted to this "micro" networking environment. This position article addresses some key issues in the creation of such a network. It concentrates mainly on the issue of routing in a network that will support communication among a large collection of small-sized, possibly mobile nodes, operating in an environment with continually changing conditions. Because of its very small coverage area, we term such a network a micronetwork.