Wireless sensor networking (WSN) is rooted in the concept of giving voice to the myriad of objects in the physical world—objects that can help provide more information about the environment around us. Today, WSNs are increasingly used in industrial applications for monitoring and control of critical processes, or in general daily life to measure environmental variables like temperature and humidity.

It is easy to see how this continual feedback can prove quite useful in multiple applications. So useful in fact, that it is also easy to envision such devices being used virtually everywhere. The concept of “Smart Dust” was first coined by Dr. Kris Pister as a way to visualize tiny wireless sensors embedded in objects to provide access to previously stranded data. As WSNs rapidly grow, his vision is quickly becoming a reality.

To support this growth, the networks themselves must also scale well beyond what is currently deployed, and the limitation that many WSN vendors have designed in their network architectures. Dust Networks understands the significance of ensuring that the overall network performance must improve as more nodes are added. Extending well beyond the protocol stack, scalability comes from ensuring the algorithms, the system design, and the networking protocols are all well suited to situations where a large number of nodes are in use.