Monash University Clayton 2004

Welcome to the web page of Steven Koelmeyer, fourth year Monash student.  On this page you will find information about my Honours project and my progress to date.  If you would like more information, you can contact me with any questions. 

Well I guess I should tell you what my project is all about right?

Ad Hoc sensor technology is progressing very rapidly but they are still very limited in their ability to do anything other than their basic function. The main focus of their design has been their size and their battery life . With applications such as habitat monitoring and battle field information, each mote needs to live as long as possible. With these design specs it is difficult to choose components that can give high performance.

This is where reconfigurable hardware comes in. By using a low powered FPGA instead of a powerful processor, you get a huge performance increase without draining all the power resources on the sensor mote.

What I hope to acheive is some way of sending reconfiguration data through the ad hoc network to the FPGA running on the sensor mote and change its functionality while the system is running.

This investigation originates form the project started at Berkeley University which was called Smart Dust.  In collaboration with DARAPA, Berkeley set out to develop cubic millimeter motes.  The research has produced technology that is now being sold through Crossbow including both the hardware and software.  As a result, these tools are being used in this project.

Feel free to browse the Pictures and Links sections which contain relevant material to this project.