Linear Technology acquires Dust Networks

Nicolas Mokhoff, EE Times -- EDN, December 21, 2011

MANHASSET, NY -- Linear Technology has acquired Dust Networks a provider of low-power wireless sensor network (WSN) technology.

While terms of the transaction were not disclosed and there will be some transaction-related costs, Dust's ongoing results are not expected to be material in the short term to Linear's financial statements, according to Linear.

Dust Networks' low-power radio and software technology complements Linear's strengths in industrial instrumentation, power management and energy harvesting technology.

"Combined with Linear's precision low-power sensor interface products and battery-free energy harvesting technology, we can now offer the industry's highest performance remote monitoring solutions," Erik Soule, vice president of signal conditioning and high frequency products for Linear Technology, in a statement.

Low-power wireless sensing is an emerging solution for industrial process control, building automation, and data center energy management. It plays a growing importance of machine-to-machine communications to enable remote data acquisition.

"Smart Dust" was first conceived as a simple way to deploy intelligent wireless sensors by Kris Pister, founder and chief technologist of Dust Networks. The company then pioneered SmartMesh networks that comprise a self-forming mesh of nodes, or "motes," which collect and relay data, and a network manager that monitors and manages network performance and sends data to the host application.

All motes in a SmartMesh network-even the routing nodes-are designed to run on batteries for years, allowing the ultimate flexibility in placing sensors exactly where they need to go with low cost "peel and stick" installations.

The hallmark of Dust Networks' technology is that it combines low power, standards-based radio technology, time diversity, frequency diversity, and physical diversity-to assure reliability, scalability, wire-free power source flexibility, and ease-of-use, according to the company.

This story was originally posted by EE Times.