Dust Network

The Dust Network, developed by Dust Networks Inc, is a low-power radio-based meshed sensor network, Wireless Sensor Network(WSN). The Dust Network dates back to the 1990s and operates in the ISM band at 2.4 GHz.

In terms of configuration, a Dust Network consists of a manager unit and various nodes. The communication between the nodes and is time synchronous in time slots. The allocation procedure is a channel hopping procedure and is called Time Slotted Channel Hopping( TSCH). In the TSCH method, the time slots are allocated to the nodes with microsecond precision, so that the transmission times and reception times of all nodes are known. This has the advantage that the nodes are switched active only for the time slots assigned to them, thus reducing the power requirements.

The networks can have over a hundred nodes and operate compliant with 6LoWPAN and IEEE 802.15.4e. The manager unit records link values, supports monitoring and provides reporting. Redundant paths can be established due to the flexibility of the connection routes and mappings. It can also change active transmission modes and passive sleep modes when battery power is depleted.

Dust Networks can be used as wireless sensor networks in many industrial fields such as logistics and inventory, sensing physical variables such as temperature, pressure, vibration, humidity and many others.