Low-power sensors will have it made: Wake up quickly, transmit data, go back to sleep.

What if people with chronic conditions had their health constantly monitored with inexpensive sensors so that minor problems could be identified and addressed before they ever escalated?

Sensor network technology under development at TI should enable that and much more.

TI teams are focusing on many aspects of making such sensors a reality, which includes pushing the power needs for wireless transmitters ever lower and optimizing wireless sensor protocols for low-power operation.

• Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies take at least a few dozen milliwatts of power, requiring relatively large batteries for mobile applications. TI engineers working on wireless sensors want to achieve an order of magnitude less, enabling operation on just a few milliwatts supplied by paper-thin batteries or energy scavenging.
• In a sensor-node protocol under development, most of the complexity resides on the base station in order to conserve power among the sensors. Sensors can then just wake up quickly from sleep mode, do any transmitting, receiving or processing necessary, and then go right back to sleep.
• Partitioning work and algorithms within the sensors is also critical to ensure low power consumption. "We’re doing things in digital that reduce the power-hungry analog burden,” said Sri Hosur of TI’s R&D labs.
• Security is a top priority when dealing with health data, and so security is at the core of the sensor protocol. That arrangement also conserves power compared to protocols in which security is an add-on or an afterthought.
• Another priority is to optimize the use of mesh networking in which each sensor not only captures and disseminates its data but also acts as a relay for other nodes, increasing reliability.

Once low-power sensors are perfected, they’re expected to spread rapidly, not only in other health applications – monitoring nursing home residents and intensive care unit patients, for instance – but also in such disparate applications as office building energy management and environmental monitoring.