Millennial Net Signs Development Agreement With Ashahi KASEI, One of Japan's Largest Manufacturers of Housing and Construction Materials

Business Wire, Sept 20, 2001

Business/Technology Editors

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 20, 2001

Millennial Net's ultra-small, ultra low power wireless computing

device to be used in residential security and home convenience

applications.

Millennial Net, Inc. today announced the signing of a development agreement with Asahi KASEI, one of Japan's largest manufacturers of housing and construction materials. The development agreement calls for Millennial Net to customize its ultra-small, ultra-low power, wireless computing device, the i-Bean(TM) 4000 for use in residential security and home convenience applications. The i-Bean 4000 is about the size of three stacked quarters, can transmit and receive data up to a range of 30 meters and runs on a standard coin battery.

"The i-Bean 4000 will be used to physically monitor the status of windows and doors in the home", said Sheng Liu, Millennial Net's Chief Operating Officer. "The advantages of our i-Bean 4000's lie chiefly in the ultra-low power design of our devices, algorithms and protocols which are vital to Asahi KASEI's residential applications that rely on limited power resources in exchange for a smaller size and greater ease of installation. No other devices on the market can compete with Millennial Net's design in power consumption, form factor and reliability."

The i-Bean 4000's radio frequency band is selectable between 300MHz and 900MHz, with a maximum bandwidth of 115 kb/sec. In Japan, the i-Bean 4000 operates at 429.5MHz and below 322MHz. It operates on a 3 VDC cell battery and on the average draws no more than 1 mA of current with a transmission distance of up to 30 meters. For communications with a PC, cell phone or PDA, the i-Bean 4000 converts RF signals to serial RS232 format. For networking, the communications mode can be point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and multipoint-to-multipoint. Other key features include eight channels of A/D and two channels of D/A, both with 10-bit data resolution, ten channels of digital I/O and two channels of PWM output signals. The i-Bean 4000 has immediate utility in "personal area networking", wearable computing, security, equipment monitoring and other close range wireless applications in the consumer, industrial, medical and military markets.

For interested OEM's the i-Bean 4000 is available as a development kit for OEM prototyping and includes five i-Bean 4000 transmitters/receivers, three i-Bean 4000 readers, one central base station and the accompanying software and documentation. The price for the development kit is $4,500. Millennial Net also provides for-fee development services to qualified OEM's and VAR's. All development services fees are credited against future licensing and/or royalty fees.

Asahi KASEI is one of Japan's largest chemical and construction materials companies with annual sales in excess of $10 billion. Lines of business include chemical and plastics, housing and construction materials, fibers and textiles, microelectronics, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, as well as various special products and services.

Millennial Net, Inc. is a privately held Cambridge, Massachusetts technology company founded by leading MIT researchers. Millennial Net is the leader in ultra-small, ultra-low power wireless computing devices for the consumer, industrial, medical and military markets. From years of fundamental research and development in academic and industrial facilities, the engineering team at Millennial Net has established a unique combination of expertise in ultra-low power microelectronics, optics, mixed-signals, RF, biomedical instrumentation, and system integration.