Smart wireless autonomous microsystems (SWAMs) for sensor actuator networks

Today a lot of different sensors and actuators are available which have an analog or digital, a standardized or not standardized interface. Many applications needs to measure sensor values, to control actuators and to interact between several sensors/actuators and other systems. Thus an intrinsic goal exists that the sensors and actuators can autonomously communicate with each other. A lot of applications are not suitable for wired communication. Hence there is an additional goal to realize the communication wireless. These goals lead to the challenge to implement smart, wireless, autonomous microsystems (SWAMs). Such a microsystem may capture the data of several sensors and control actuators. It will be intelligent and can communicate with a great number of other systems. Because the communication is wireless it is necessary that the SWAM is power aware to achieve a long lifetime. With SWAMs it is possible to build sensor actuator networks in the area of medical technology, environmental technology, process technology etc. This paper gives a survey about the requirements for the architecture of SWAMs. Then it will be pointed out, which feasibilities exist to realize such architectures. Finally the results from the implementation of such a microsystem will be presented and at the end of the paper novel applications will be showed.