BoboLink: Low Latency and Low Power Communication for Intelligent Environments

Abstract

Intelligent Environments (IEs) enrich the physical world by connecting it to software applications in order to increase user comfort, safety and efficiency. IEs are often supported by wireless networks of smart sensors and actuators, which offer multi-year battery life within small packages. However, existing radio mesh networks suffer from high latency, which precludes their use in many user interface systems such as real-time speech, touch or positioning. While recent advances in optical networks promise low end-to-end latency through symbol-synchronous transmission, current approaches are power hungry and therefore cannot be battery powered. We tackle this problem by introducing BoboLink, a mesh network that delivers low-power and low-latency optical networking through a combination of symbol-synchronous transmission and a novel wake-up technology. BoboLink delivers mesh-wide wake-up in 1.13ms, with a quiescent power consumption of 237 mu W. This enables building-wide human computer interfaces to be seamlessly delivered using wireless mesh networks for the first time.