Posted by Joe Polastre on May 23, 2007 at 6:48 PM
Filed under: Industry Moteiv

M2M Magazine recently asked a number of questions of wireless sensor networking companies to determine the stage of the technology, issues that customers are facing, and outlook for future developments (such as standards). I participated in the Q&A with M2M on behalf of Moteiv, and our answers are featured as part of the supplement.

Participants included:

• Aether Wire
• Arch Rock
• Augusta Systems
• Cirronet
• Coronis Systems
• Crossbow Technology
• Dust Networks
• Eka Systems
• Ember
• Honeywell Sensing & Control
• MaxStream
• MeshNetics
• Millennial Net
• Moteiv
• Pedigree Technologies
• Sensicast Systems
• Tendril

The primary Q&A document is very interesting when analyzing how each company views their participation in the ecosystem. It is rare that such a large number of opinions are brought together in one single document; even more interesting is the ability to piece together the strategy that different companies are using.

The most common answer that isn't really an answer at all is "it depends on the application". It is true that I can't give you the radio range without knowing where you are deploying the system; however, mesh networking systems are supposed to alleviate the problems with the point-to-point radio range setup and configuration in older designs.

Battery power is another one of these metrics where it ranges anywhere from "we live forever!" to "a little while". I took a difference stance on the battery power question: Adopter's should always verify a vendor's claim about battery life by asking for the conditions under which the claim was made (such as "How often does each node send data?" and "What is the data latency?") and the type of battery that is used (D cells have much more power than AA cells and can sustain a longer lifetime at the expense of package size and cost). Battery life is always a frustrating thing for me to read about on competitors' websites. Sure, slapping the car battery on my tiny sensor mote will let it last 10 years, but is that really practical?

If you want the summary of what the participants are talking about (in my opinion!), here it is. I haven't included everyone, sorry.

• Arch Rock -- IP, IP, IP. Connect sensor networks with IP.
• Augusta Systems -- Management is a solved problem and we've got software for that.
• Coronis Systems -- Focus on automatic meter reading, cluster-tree apps with available backend infrastructure
• Crossbow Technology -- A general position that the "hard problems" have already been solved.
• Dust Networks -- We have reliability and low power and it is the best in the industry.
• Ember -- Metcalfe's Law. The value of the network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes.
• Honeywell Sensing & Control -- Pushing ISA SP100 as the wireless standard.
• MaxStream -- Big focus on OEM support and integration.
• Sensicast Systems -- Solutions are easier to use with web technology like SOAP, REST, XML
• Tendril -- Anyone can use sensor networks. We got software for that.

Of course, it is impossible to sum up 29 pages of text into single pithy statements, so I apologize in advance if I've misrepresented your position. If I have, drop us a line and let me know!

Download the full reports from M2M Magazine >>  

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