The dime-sized i-Bean 5000 transceiver, unveiled at the Sensors Expo in Rosemount, Ill., last week, will operate 10 years on a coin cell battery with a update of once per second. "It is self-organizing, self-configuring in a wireless net," said Tod Riedel, Millennial Net's president and CEO.

The IEEE802.15.4 standard defines the physical layer for short-distance wireless networks—in this case 115 kbits/sec over 30 meters—Millennial defines the protocol, said Riedel. Repeaters will extend the network beyond 30 meters.

Network topologies that are configurable on the fly include a "star structure" linked to a central basestation, a "total mesh" structure and a hybrid "star-mesh" structure. The star structure is widely used in hospitals for patient monitoring, Riedel said, while the total mesh structure has been implemented in home meter reading systems, where the meter reader moves from house-to-house reading outside meters.

By targeting building information systems, meter reading, security and remote health monitoring, Millennial Net may achieve a toehold in an industry automation infrastructure whose upgrade will be worth as much as $115 billion, according to the ARC Advisory Group (Dedham, Mass.).

Co-founded by Riedel, MIT professor Sokwoo Rhee and Raytheon engineer Sheng Liu, the Cambridge, Mass. start up was self-funded for the first two years beginning in 2000. Its first round funding, $6 million from investors like General Catalyst Partners, Kodiak Venture Partners and Globespan Capital Partners, came in 2002, Riedel said.

Millennial Net utilizes a variety of ISM band radio technologies, including 315 MHz and 2.4 GHz. Hardware suppliers include ChipCon (Oslo, Norway).

Millennial Net applies protocols that allow the micro-power narrowband sensors to form self-organizing wireless networks. The I-Bean sensors communicate with each other and other control devices without human intervention.

The new i-Bean 5000 is effectively a remote data acquisition system. It includes an 8-chnnel A/D converter, 2 D/A converters, 8 digital I/O channels and 2 pulse-width modulated channels.