Architectural Tradeoffs in Wearable Systems

• Published in: Architecture of Computing Systems - ARCS 2006 pp. 217 - 231
• Main Authors: Bharatula, Nagendra Bhargava, Anliker, Urs, Lukowicz, Paul, Tröster, Gerhard
• Format: Book Chapter Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2006; Springer
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Activity Recognition; Applied sciences; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Electronic Packaging; Exact sciences and technology; Pervasive Computing; Recognition Rate; Software; Wearable Sensor; Acceleration sensor; Legged locomotion; System architecture; Energy consumption; Walking; Electronic packaging; Metric; Mobile architecture; Low power; Mobile computing
• ISBN: 9783540327653; 3540327657
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/11682127_16

Wearable computing places tighter constraints on architecture design than traditional mobile computing. The architecture is described in terms of; miniaturization, power-awareness, global low-power design and flexibility or suitability for an application. In this article we present a new methodology based on four metrics that represent different properties. Flexibility, Electronic Packaging, Relative Recognition Performance and Energy Consumption metrics are proposed and evaluated on practical design examples to study different trade-offs. The proof of concept case study is analyzed by studying (a) walking behavior with acceleration sensors (b) office-worker activities with a combination of acceleration and light sensors and (c) a computational task. The results show that the proposed metrics and methodology assists in selecting an optimal architecture for a given application in the domain of wearable computing.