A Survey on Wearable Technology: History, State-Of-The-Art and Current
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Computer Networks 193 (2021) 108074 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computer Networks journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comnet Survey paper A Survey on Wearable Technology: History, State-of-the-Art and Current Challenges Aleksandr Ometov a,<, Viktoriia Shubina a,e, Lucie Klus a,d, Justyna Skibi«ska c,a, Salwa Saafi c,a, Pavel Pascacio d,a, Laura Flueratoru e,a, Darwin Quezada Gaibor d,a, Nadezhda Chukhno b,d, Olga Chukhno b,a, Asad Ali a,c, Asma Channa e,b, Ekaterina Svertoka e,c, Waleed Bin Qaim a,b, Raúl Casanova-Marqués c,d, Sylvia Holcer d,c, Joaquín Torres-Sospedra d, Sven Casteleyn d, Giuseppe Ruggeri b, Giuseppe Araniti b, Radim Burget c, Jiri Hosek c, Elena Simona Lohan a a Tampere University, Finland b University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, Italy c Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic d Universitat Jaume I, Castellon, Spain e University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania ARTICLEINFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Technology is continually undergoing a constituent development caused by the appearance of billions new Wearables interconnected ``things'' and their entrenchment in our daily lives. One of the underlying versatile technologies, Communications namely wearables, is able to capture rich contextual information produced by such devices and use it to Standardization deliver a legitimately personalized experience. The main aim of this paper is to shed light on the history Privacy of wearable devices and provide a state-of-the-art review on the wearable market. Moreover, the paper Security Data processing provides an extensive and diverse classification of wearables, based on various factors, a discussion on wireless Interoperability communication technologies, architectures, data processing aspects, and market status, as well as a variety of User adoption other actual information on wearable technology. Finally, the survey highlights the critical challenges and Localization existing/future solutions. Classification Future perspective 1. Introduction new market segment – a separate niche requiring standalone efforts has emerged as devices carried by humans but no necessarily gener- Today, the rapid proliferation of the Information and Communica- ating the human-type data. Internet of Wearable Things (IoWT) has tions Technology (ICT) niche is being pushed by an increasing number emerged as part of a broader IoT, bringing new challenges from various of new services and growing user demands. Generally, the number of interconnected handheld devices has been growing tremendously from technological perspectives to the research community [2]. year to year, empowered by both consumers and broad penetration of The terms wearables, wearable devices, or also wearable technology the Internet of Things (IoT)[1]. Small, affordable, and very different refer to small electronic and mobile devices, or computers with wireless in shape, purpose, and application, the IoT devices had a tremendous communications capability that are incorporated into gadgets, acces- impact on the development of the telecommunications field, not only sories, or clothes, which can be worn on the human body, or even bringing new long-range wireless technologies to the market, defining invasive versions such as micro-chips or smart tattoos [3]. Compared to new requirements in terms of reliability and availability but also push- ing network operators and vendors to redesign the entire ecosystem, today's smartphones and tablets, the primary added value is that wear- switching from conventional human-generated traffics to more diverse ables can provide various monitoring and scanning features, including IoT one. biofeedback or other sensory physiological functions such as biometry- This tremendous impact on the ICT domain and proliferation of related ones [4]. Wearables can continuously measure such values — the IoT allowed the developers to bring their attention to an entirely < Correspondence to: Tampere University, P.O. Box 1001, FI-33014, Finland. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Ometov). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2021.108074 Received 1 December 2020; Received in revised form 3 March 2021; Accepted 27 March 2021 Available online 8 April 2021 1389-1286/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). A. Ometov et al. Computer Networks 193 (2021) 108074 Fig. 2. Wearable market growth forecast [9]. Fig. 1. Perspective on the development of personal wearable ecosystems. steadily increase over the following decades, with a predominant transi- restricted by their battery constraints; they are convenient, seamless, tion from bracelets and sport trackers to smarter and more feature-rich portable, and can offer hands-free access to electronics. wearables. Wearable technology has a tremendous impact upon ICT in- The consumer-wearable devices of today are beyond their inception dustry, and smart wearables are expected to disrupt most personal and but still very much in their infancy. Most people still use a combination business sectors, such as the industrial, healthcare, and sports domains. of an activity tracker and a smartphone, see Fig.1 , limiting their Moreover, the global enterprise wearable market alone accounted experience to the number of steps and heart rate. Indeed, the variety for over EUR 18 billion in 2017, and it is predicted to grow at a of data collected and processed in a wearable ecosystem context can Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.8% during the forecast hand over an unprecedented user experience for humanity [5]. In ad- period, 2019 * 2026 [17]. The details on market changes as well as dition to conventional sports trackers, smartwatches, on-body cameras, future perspective [9] are given in Fig.2 . Here, wearable devices could heart rate meters, and eye-wear, the upcoming generation of wearables be used to improve employees' physical activity, enable relaxation will also involve augmented-, virtual-, mixed-, and enhanced-reality more effectively, and increase workers' safety and work efficiency [18]. devices, various smart clothes, and industrial wearable equipment. Added value is also achieved in other sectors, such as smart city, As foreseen by the ICT industry, almost 70% of early adopters have transportation, gamification, and infotainment. Wearable technology shown their interest in correlating their lives with the next-generation relieves people from continuously having to hold their smartphones wearables [6]. Predominately, a significant portion of IoWT available in their hands from the usability perspective. This convenience feature on the market today already provides a smartphone-like experience by allows handling calls, emails, texts, and many other alerts without even employing voice and gesture control together with well-designed input getting the bulky devices out [19,20]. Following Llamas' work, ``within and output interfaces. the enterprise, wearables can help accelerate companies' digital trans- Nonetheless, the miniaturization trend, portability, wireless commu- formation by transmitting information back and forth while allowing nication, energy-efficient computing, and advanced display technolo- workers to complete their tasks faster'' [21]. gies have been combined to create state-of-the-art smart devices. The The mobile devices' market growth brings new and usable devices, patriarch of these devices, a smartphone, was released back in 1992 [7], numerous benefits, and new applications from the users' perspective. and intelligent media are now ready to lead the next great wave of One of the primary stimuli brought by wearable technology is the innovation. Comparing traditional smartphones with wearables, both encouragement of proactive solutions to deal with healthcare, fitness, have their pros and cons. A traditional smartphone's main advantage aging, disabilities, education, transportation, enterprise, finance, en- is its higher accuracy in various performance metrics due to less power trance systems, gaming, music, and many others. Since wearables, as consumption limitations as a general trade-off to size. On the other known today, were historically planned as purely medical devices, let hand, wearables are highly battery-constrained devices, yet have the us first consider an example from the healthcare field. Unfortunately, potential to change the world as we know it — just as mobile devices people tend to deal with potential health issues reactively, e.g., when did over the past 20 years. It is expected that they will improve the they feel sick or in pain, they tend to appoint a visit to their doctor. technological and socio-cultural parts of our lives. Moreover, wearables Carrying a wearable device may potentially forecast the disease by also have the strength to improve well-established sectors, such as continuous health tracking and even inform the doctor automatically the smartphone industry and other hand-held devices. This trend is in order to take measures to prevent the incipient threat actively [22]. confirmed by many recent studies and will be discussed in this survey. Even the simple activity trackers are already capable of monitoring From the monetary perspective, the wearable market is anticipated sleep patterns, heart rate, level of stress, or body temperature that could to keep on growing exponentially in the coming years. The forecast is be utilized for improving the health habits of any individual [23]. at more than 20% growth rate annually,