Company Overview

Millennial Net develops wireless sensor networking software, systems, and services that enable OEMs and systems integrators to quickly and cost-effectively implement wireless sensor networks. These networks enable the remote monitoring and management of critical devices while providing data to enable more informed decision-making, better control and increased revenue opportunities. Millennial Net leads the industry in real-world deployments with networks installed across commercial building and industrial environments.

Our Background

Founded in 2000, by two MIT researchers, Millennial began as a pioneer and innovator in wireless sensor network technologies. Today, Millennial Net is rapidly driving the technology into products, OEM applications and enterprise solutions and is primarily focused on commercial and industrial markets. Its MeshScape™ wireless sensor network products lead the industry in real-world deployments with networks installed across commercial building and industrial environments. To offer comprehensive solutions based on wireless mesh networks, Millennial works with partners who provide complimentary technologies and applications, as well as implementation and support expertise.

Our Technology

In order to realize benefits wireless sensor networking promises, the technology must be able to address several critical requirements: reliability of data transmission, responsiveness to adapt to dynamic environments, power efficiency, and scalability. The MeshScape™ wireless sensor networking software platform from Millennial Net delivers on all of these requirements. MeshScape’s ready-to-embed hardware modules support fast and cost-effective application development.

Millennial Net has developed and optimized its technology to address the unique characteristics and challenges associated with wireless sensor networking. The end result is a networking system and associated protocol that is highly scalable, ultra-efficient, and extremely responsive and resilient in dynamic environments. The Millennial Net protocol for wireless sensor networks provides the industry’s longest battery life at sensor nodes, while delivering data over fault-tolerant links with end-to-end redundancy.

The Millennial Net protocol uses Persistent Dynamic Routing™—a set of patented techniques for reliable and scalable wireless sensor networks—which has been designed specifically to meet all critical challenges of wireless sensor networks. When forming an ad hoc sensor network, Persistent Dynamic Routing requires minimal overhead for requesting and establishing connectivity without relying on the bandwidth-consuming flooding technique.

• Highly responsive - Unlike other protocols that require route discovery for the entire network to react to changes in the network’s topology, MeshScape performs discovery at a local level. This reduces the number of discovery packets generated, especially for large and/or dense networks, and minimizes network latency due to self-healing. It also results in much higher responsiveness compared to other protocols in the highly dynamic environments.
• Reliable - MeshScape guarantees packet delivery from sensor to end node to the gateway by using hop-by-hop packet acknowledgement. In dynamic RF environments, if a primary route path is impaired, the network will automatically revert to a secondary route path. Unlike other protocols that drop a data packet when it can’t be delivered and simply send back an error message, MeshScape rolls back both the data packet and responsibility for transmitting it through the network until an alternative route is found.
• Extremely power efficient - The MeshScape system offers a power-efficient solution allowing all nodes to be battery powered, enabling networks to run on coin cell batteries for years. The MeshScape protocol generates minimal packet overhead for high power efficiency. End nodes and mesh nodes are optimized to be actively listening or transmitting for minimal time periods to conserve power. While most solutions enable end nodes to sleep for power conservation, MeshScape supports sleep mode for mesh nodes for complete, network-wide power optimization.
• Scalable - In wireless sensor networking, the network’s ability to scale to a large number of nodes is dependent on its ability to minimize packets needed to create and maintain route path information. In a completely static environment, other protocols may scale relatively well, In the real world, however, increased environmental dynamics generate more overhead affecting the actual scalability of the network. The efficient MeshScape protocol generates minimal route path packet overhead for maximum scalability.

Our Clients and Markets

The MeshScape system was designed specifically for commercial- and industrial-class wireless sensor networking applications. Millennial Net has established strong customer bases in the building automation and industrial automation industries, but the MeshScape system has application beyond those two key vertical markets such as medical monitoring, agricultural monitoring, and homeland security and defense.

• Industrial Automation - Industrial automation OEMs are able to quickly and cost-effectively add wireless sensor networking capabilities to remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, precision instrumentation, and other industrial automation applications. MeshScape’s power-efficiency, high reliability, and proven effectiveness in RF-unfriendly settings make it highly suitable for harsh industrial environments.
• Energy Management - Millennial Net’s energy management offerings are ideally suited to retrofits as well as new facilities, to quickly and cost-effectively add wireless sensor networking capabilities to monitor and optimize energy usage and improve compliance with energy policies.

Opportunities

Today, wireless sensor networks are being used in a number of low-power, low-data-rate applications aiding predictive maintenance on the factory floor, monitoring temperature, humidity, and occupancy for energy management, collecting water and gas meter readings, monitoring shipments through the supply chain, and reporting on the vital signs of individual wearers. Looking forward, wireless sensor networks will unlock new and exciting applications and services.

• Replacing Traditional Wired Networks - Sensors and actuators can now be monitored and controlled wirelessly, obviating the expensive installation and maintenance of copper or fiber optic cables. For instance, wireless sensor networks are now being installed in energy management systems, replacing the traditional cabling used to connect to a controller.
• New Opportunities - The emerging technology behind wireless sensor networks is opening the door to a new world of opportunities in data collection and system monitoring applications—opportunities where traditional wired networks made them economically or physically impossible to consider. Today, applications as varied as monitoring water usage in large apartment complexes to unobtrusively monitoring a patient’s blood sugar level are now possible. Wireless sensor networks will allow companies to develop new sources of revenue and cut or eliminate waste.

Facts At-a-Glance

• Company Name - Millennial Net, Inc.
• Headquarters - Burlington, MA USA
• Industry - Wireless Sensor Networking
• Founded - Founded in 2000 by two MIT researchers, Sokwoo Rhee and Sheng Liu
• URL - www.millennialnet.com
• Key Offering - MeshScape™
• Incorporation - A Delaware C Corporation
• Management Team
  • Martin Hanssmann, President, CEO
  • Sokwoo Rhee, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer
  • Sheng Liu, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Vice President, Technical Services
  • Mark Hanna, Vice President, Sales
  • Mark O'Hearne, Vice President, Business Development and Marketing
• Media Contact - Jeannette Vining; 781-222-1030 x254; jvining@millennialnet.com