As smartphone penetration saturates, we are witnessing a new trend in personal mobile devices—wearable mobile devices or simply wearables as it is often called. Wearables come in many different forms and flavors targeting different accessories and clothing that people wear. Although small in size, they are often expected to continuously sense, collect, and upload various physiological data to improve quality of life. These requirements put significant demand on improving communication security and reducing power consumption of the system, fueling new research in these areas. In this paper, we first provide a comprehensive survey and classification of commercially available wearables and research prototypes. We then examine the communication security issues facing the popular wearables followed by a survey of solutions studied in the literature. We also categorize and explain the techniques for improving the power efficiency of wearables. Next, we survey the research literature in wearable computing. We conclude with future directions in wearable market and research.

A Survey of Wearable Devices and Challenges

Smart textiles research represents a new model for generating creative and novel solutions for integrating electronics into unusual environments and will result in new discoveries that push the boundaries of science forward A key driver for smart textiles research is the fact that both textile and electronics fabrication processes are capable of functionalizing large-area surfaces at very high speeds In this article we review the history of smart textiles development, introducing the main trends and technological challenges faced in this field Then, we identify key challenges that are the focus of ongoing research We then proceed to discuss fundamentals of smart textiles: textile fabrication methods and textile interconnect lines, textile sensor, and output device components and integration of commercial components into textile architectures Next we discuss representative smart textile systems and finally provide our outlook over the field and a prediction for the future

Smart textiles: Challenges and opportunities

The invention of the Jacquard weaving machine led to the concept of a stored "program" and "mechanized" binary information processing. This development served as the inspiration for C. Babbage's analytical engine-the precursor to the modern-day computer. Today, more than 200 years later, the link between textiles and computing is more realistic than ever. In this paper, we look at the synergistic relationship between textiles and computing and identify the need for their "integration" using tools provided by an emerging new field of research that combines the strengths and capabilities of electronics and textiles into one: electronic textiles, or e-textiles. E-textiles, also called smart fabrics, have not only "wearable" capabilities like any other garment, but also have local monitoring and computation, as well as wireless communication capabilities. Sensors and simple computational elements are embedded in e-textiles, as well as built into yarns, with the goal of gathering sensitive information, monitoring vital statistics, and sending them remotely (possibly over a wireless channel) for further processing. The paper provides an overview of existing efforts and associated challenges in this area, while describing possible venues and opportunities for future research.

/pdf/electronic-textiles-a-platform-for-pervasive-computing-22y43zpeyn.pdf

Electronic textiles: a platform for pervasive computing

This paper describes the early conception and latest developments of electroactive polymer (EAP)-based sensors, actuators, electronic components, and power sources, implemented as wearable devices for smart electronic textiles (e-textiles). Such textiles, functioning as multifunctional wearable human interfaces, are today considered relevant promoters of progress and useful tools in several biomedical fields, such as biomonitoring, rehabilitation, and telemedicine. After a brief outline on ongoing research and the first products on e-textiles under commercial development, this paper presents the most highly performing EAP-based devices developed by our lab and other research groups for sensing, actuation, electronics, and energy generation/storage, with reference to their already demonstrated or potential applicability to electronic textiles

Electroactive polymer-based devices for e-textiles in biomedicine

Driven by the growing aging population, prevalence of chronic diseases, and continuously rising healthcare costs, the healthcare system is undergoing a fundamental transformation, from the conventional hospital-centered system to an individual-centered system. Current and emerging developments in wearable medical systems will have a radical impact on this paradigm shift. Advances in wearable medical systems will enable the accessibility and affordability of healthcare, so that physiological conditions can be monitored not only at sporadic snapshots but also continuously for extended periods of time, making early disease detection and timely response to health threats possible. This paper reviews recent developments in the area of wearable medical systems for p-Health. Enabling technologies for continuous and noninvasive measurements of vital signs and biochemical variables, advances in intelligent biomedical clothing and body area networks, approaches for motion artifact reduction, strategies for wearable energy harvesting, and the establishment of standard protocols for the evaluation of wearable medical devices are presented in this paper with examples of clinical applications of these technologies.

Wearable Medical Systems for p-Health

Textiles and computing share a synergistic relationship, which is being harnessed to create a new paradigm in personalized mobile information processing (PMIP) In this paper, we provide an overview of this "interconnection" between the two fields and present the vision for "E-Textiles," which represents the convergence of the two fields We discuss the role of the Georgia Tech Wearable Motherboard in pioneering this paradigm of "fabric is the computer" and serving as a framework for PMIP Finally, recent research in this area resulting in the realization of a "computational fabric network" is discussed

/pdf/the-wearable-motherboard-a-framework-for-personalized-mobile-3tmaybt17q.pdf

The wearable motherboard: a framework for personalized mobile information processing (PMIP)

We describe a digital circuit synthesis algorithm specialized for the domain of pattern matching circuits implemented in reconfigurable logic. We propose to use this algorithm as part of a system for implementing high-throughput pattern classification, for instance as part of a packet filter in an internetwork router. The goals of the approach are throughputs on the order of 100M classifications per second with reconfiguration times (including all synthesis) being held to a minimum.We evaluate the algorithms using rulesets from a pattern classification problem in networking, IP firewalling (150 rules on 100 bits), and evaluate their fitness to handle the demands placed on them by high-speed networks. In addition we use synthetic rulesets in an attempt to explore the scalability of our algorithm.

Pattern matching in reconfigurable logic for packet classification

Emerging application domains such as interactive vision, animation, and multimedia collaboration display dynamic scalable parallelism and high-computational requirements, making them good candidates for executing on parallel architectures such as SMPs and clusters of SMPs. Stampede is a programming system that has many of the needed functionalities such as high-level data sharing, dynamic cluster-wide threads and their synchronization, support for task and data parallelism, handling of time-sequenced data items, and automatic buffer management. We present an overview of Stampede, the primary data abstractions, the algorithmic basis of garbage collection, and the issues in implementing these abstractions on a cluster of SMPs. We also present a set of micromeasurements along with two multimedia applications implemented on top of Stampede, through which we demonstrate the low overhead of this runtime and that it is suitable for the streaming multimedia applications.

/pdf/stampede-a-cluster-programming-middleware-for-interactive-wgffcjhel4.pdf

Stampede: a cluster programming middleware for interactive stream-oriented applications

A digital network between active components or "buttons" atop an e-textile fabric must handle the inexact placement of wires in the fabric both for signal distribution and for power distribution. We approach the problem of signal distribution by making the pin logic of the buttons reconfigurable and by providing enough local state to allow an external agent to discover and to reconfigure the buttons into a working network. We describe a prototype system of a 2x2 array of FPGA-and-microcontroller buttons atop a fabric with 0.100"-pitch wiring including architecture decisions, circuits and software algorithms.

A prototype network embedded in textile fabric

Interactive multimedia applications (such as audio/video processing) are good candidates for cluster computing. Such applications are best represented as coarse-grain dataflow graphs and are rich in pipelined, task, and data parallelism. Specification of the strategies for mapping computational abstractions to compute nodes, and their plumbing are two important issues in the design of such complex parallel and distributed applications. Due to the varieties of parallelism that are available in such applications, the space of strategies to be explored can be vast. We have developed an aspect-oriented programming language for cluster computing calledSTAGES. This language allows the algorithm design to be disentangled from the connection management and performance concerns. STAGES provides a simple syntax for specifying the connections among threads and data abstractions, and their mapping onto the nodes of the cluster. The current implementation targets theStampedecluster programming library. However, the language is general and can be retargeted to a different set of abstractions. In this paper, we present STAGES, its implementation, and its utility for mapping complex applications onto a cluster. We also present performance results from exploring the parallelism space for two such applications on a 17-node cluster of 8-way SMPs (Intel Xeon processors) interconnected by Gigabit Ethernet.

/pdf/towards-aspect-oriented-programming-support-for-cluster-4k1bo2q1u5.pdf

Kenneth Mackenzie

Papers

The wearable motherboard: a framework for personalized mobile information processing (PMIP)

Pattern matching in reconfigurable logic for packet classification

Stampede: a cluster programming middleware for interactive stream-oriented applications

A prototype network embedded in textile fabric

Towards aspect-oriented programming support for cluster computing