Roger Allan
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ED Online ID #20543 |
January 20, 2009
There’s a very bright future for microelectromechanical-system (MEMS) sensors and actuators that will give us an unprecedented level of access to our largely analog world. That was the theme of many presentations at the 2008 MEMS Industry Group (MIG) Executive Congress meeting, held in Monterey, Calif., last November. Despite the downward spiral in the overall economy for 2009, analysts at the meeting projected a rosier picture for MEMS for 2010 and beyond, particularly in industrial, consumer electronics (including cell phones), and automotive applications.
MEMS sensors are inherently analog devices that use mechanical elements to produce analog signals. They sense a variety of analog signals like pressure, temperature, acceleration, flow, humidity, sound, light, and chemicals that are then conditioned and digitized for use by computers. Depending on the application, even the output MEMS actuator may produce an analog signal. Analog designers certainly understand that. As digital ICs increase in speed and density, analog issues become even more challenging and less forgiving.
MIG Congress keynote speaker Roger Meike, senior director of Area 51 at Sun Microsystems’ SunSPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) project, discussed how MEMS sensors will provide us with an unlimited amount of awareness about our environment during his presentation. Essentially a Java-based inventor’s platform, the SunSPOT project puts MEMS and other sensor and transducer technologies into the hands of creative people in many fields, including education, consumer hobbies, the arts, science and R&D, sports and fitness, ecology, and computers (Fig. 1).
“We want to build a community of developers that will enable new devices and service and engage with new potential customers,” Meike said. “We need to inspire that community.”
Tapani Ryhänen, director and head of the Nokia Research Center at the Cambridge Laboratory, described a new paradigm of sensing, computing, and communication using cellular phones. He pointed to mobile services based on context information that will usher in new levels of context awareness in a data-rich environment (Fig. 2). Nokia is developing many of these types of projects together with leading academic institutions worldwide.
Panelists of all varieties addressed and debated business, venture capital, marketing, low-power, and energy conservation issues, as well as emerging MEMS applications and the convergence of MEMS in consumer electronics and mobile communications. Underlying these discussions was the search for ways to make MEMS ICs more cost-effective and lower in cost to meet potentially new application needs.
For example, panelists from Kavlico, Crossbow Technology, Texas Instruments, and Cymbet chimed in on how MEMS can enable low-power energy monitoring and conservation. This can include wireless crop monitoring, ambient energy harvesting, and powering portable electronic products.
Mark Denissen, TI’s vice president for worldwide strategic marketing, talked about the importance of low-power energy monitoring in emerging pico-projectors, a promising application space in which TI is successfully serving. He also drew a link between real-time sensors and data logging for healthcare.
“For maladies like heart disease and diabetes, MEMS-based data loggers are needed to sense key attributes like pressure, motion, flow rate, and chemicals. Lowering power levels supports data collection,” he explained.
Ralph Kling, Crossbow Technology’s chief architect for wireless products, described a future in which metrics for sensor power consumption and energy harvesters are improving. He said that we’ll reach a point of infinite battery life, an achievement that should delight consumers and manufacturers alike.
Another panel session of experts from Red Octane, Microsoft, NXP Semiconductors, Pixtronix, and VTI debated the ways MEMS has converged with consumer electronic items and portable devices, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
“This is the decade of physical interactivity,” said Microsoft hardware researcher Mike Sinclair as he talked about the importance of gesture recognition at Microsoft. He explained that his company is very much interested in a slew of MEMS devices like microphones, accelerometers, gryroscopes, and RF switches, especially for mobile phones and displays.
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