Communication and control for distributed microsystems

The authors introduce communication and control issues in the design of systems composed of distributed microsensors and microactuators. They examine reliability and bandwidth in the context of distributed microsystem design and suggest areas for further research and development. It is shown that communication networks for closed-loop microsystems must exhibit high speed while having a minimum number of wires and a simple interconnection scheme. Until such networks are constructed, the performance of distributed microsystems will fall short of expectations. The lessons learned from robot sensing are discussed.<>