Motes are tiny networked sensors with computational power developed at the U.C. Berkeley. Built using MEMS technology, the motes are capable of containing sophisticated sensors. A network of such sensors can be more efficient, flexible, and cost effective than wired sensors.
Building a network of motes poses a number of technical challenges. The motes are severely constrained in memory and
processing power - each mote has a 4 mhz Atmel chip, 8 KB of program memory, 512 bytes of data memory. The motes are also
battery powered so power conservation needs to be taken into account when determining the ad hoc routing protocol to use for
these sensor networks. Our BOOM project focuses on another technical challenge, that of querying and getting data back from
the sensors in an efficient way. Currently we ask queries for sensor data over a simple motes network and can do
aggregation. Future work includes supporting more complicated query operations and interfacing with WINS sensors manufactured
by Sensoria.