Aug. 19, 2008 – We were fascinated with the idea of battery-free, wireless, sense and control networks. Cees Links, CEO of Greenpeak Technologies, a Dutch semiconductor company describes what they call "maintenance free" networks.

LINKS: We are definitely seeing a new wave of wireless devices coming out that have control of their environment, saving energy. Greenpeak provides chips that help you to build these wireless sensor networks.

What is really unique and different about it, is at Greenpeak they run along energy from the environment; on energy that is available in the form of light or in the form of heat or in the form of motion. The energy can be used in such a way that you don’t need batteries. We are contributing to the comfort of people without polluting the environment.

What frequencies do you work in?

LINKS: Actually the frequency of the chip – our main chip product is called Emerald – the frequency is 2.4 gigahertz. It is one frequency that is available on the worldwide basis, so it makes it easy for brands and OEMs to make one product they can ship to any country in the world.

Is there any relationship of the low power usage of the chips versus the packets or the amounts of data that are transmitted?

LINKS: It is very interesting. Sensor control networks usually have a very limited amount of packets and data to be sent around.

Take temperature. If you measure temperature; you can measure it every five minutes and the size of a data packet with temperature is actually very small.

What is important in the sensor control networks is not just the data rate, but also how can you make it reliable, not using a lot of power, not requiring a lot of maintenance. Those are the kinds of things that we are focusing on with our technology for sensor control networks.

Would it be correct to say your technology is system agnostic and it really can serve all sorts of different systems? Would that be the way you look at it?

LINKS: The best way to phrase it is, our technology forms a nerve system and at the end of the nerve system you have the sensors. And the sensors are connected through the nerve system, it is a central control unit. And what we are doing is helping companies to build that system out, to build that nerve system.

Are there any systems you have been involved with, that you have been impressed by the diversity of types of data that they are collecting and transmitting through your technology?

LINKS: Just to put it in perspective, we know the number of cows already tagged in agriculture, you want to track where are the cows. Today cows are already just tagged by plain ID tags. Farmers want to do way much more with the information that can be available around the cow, what is the condition of the cows; how to feed them; what their state of health is and many more things to be handled there.

You probably would not be as involved with livestock, I would think. Your technology is not primarily an outdoor technology, is that right?

LINKS: No, actually it is very much is. Turning back to cows for a little bit, if you had one cow in a barn with five sensors, and the farmer knows he has a couple of hundred cows.

For which cow is it time to be fertilized or which cow needs what type of foods, because it is in what state? What is the milk production of the cow, what food does it need to improve the milk production? You are talking about loads of sensors around a cow. That can be carried by each cow, really improving the productivity and helping the farmer to make the lives of his stock as comfortable as possible.