Developed by a team at the university of michigan, the unnamed tiny device is a pressure monitor that can be implanted into a person's eye to treat gluocoma. It may be just one square millimeter but packs hefty punch, containing a ultra low power microprocessor, pressure sensor and a thin film battery, the Daily mail reported.
It also has a solarcell and a wireless radio with an antenna tha tca transmit data to external reader devices, the researchers said. The device is already being totuted as future of computing industry, although it needs several more years to be commercially available.
It's creators Prof.Dennis Sylvester, David Blaau and David Wentzolff claims that radio of the device needs no tuning to find the right frequency that could link to wireless network of a computer. A network of such units one day track pollution , monitor structural integrity, perform surveillance or make any object virtually smart and trackable, tha scientists said.
Prof Sylvester said : "When you get smaller than hand-held devices yuo yhen turn onto these devices. The next big challenge is to achive millimeter device which have host of new application to monitor our bodies, oue environment and our buildings. Because they are so small you could manufacture hundreds and thousands on one wefer. There could be tens to hundreds of them per person and it's this percapita increases that fuels the semiconductor industry growth. Currently the system is pressure that is designed to be implanted in the eye to continuosly track the progress of glaucoma, a potentially binding disease."
The processor in the eye pressure monitor is the third generation of researchers phoenix chip, which uses unique design and ultra sleep mode to achieve low power consumption. The newest wakes every 15 minutes to take measurement and consume an average of 5.3 nanowatts. To keep thebattery charged it requires exposure of 10 hours indoor light each day or 1.5 hours of sun light.
It can store upto a week's worth of information. While this system is miniscule and complete, it's radio doesn't euip it to talk to other similar devices, which is an important feature for any other systen that is targeted to wireless sensor networks.
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