NeTS: Small: Functional Fabric Devices and Architectures for the Internet of Things

功能织物是指旨在执行各种功能的纺织品，其应用范围从医学和体育到实现基于纺织品的智能设备(例如，服装、窗帘、室内装潢)作为物联网(IoT)中的传感器网络的潜力。功能面料的一个特别引人注目的应用是物联网可穿戴设备领域，这一领域正变得无处不在。再加上对智能手机和无线互联网的普遍访问，它们正在实现令人兴奋的新应用领域，特别是在智能家居和可穿戴医疗系统中。用于物联网的下一代可穿戴设备可能会完全集成到纺织品中，将织物转变为服装和纺织设备。利用将在本提案中开发的联网技术，功能织物将实现的应用将在有朝一日被视为：普通(例如，具有传感器的智能窗帘，其测量和调节房间内的温度)、便利性(例如，有助于防止鲜艳衣服被白色衣服洗涤的智能洗衣机)、个人/专业生产力(例如，用于社交/工作应用的功能织物与语音和数据收发机的融合)以及改变/挽救生活(例如，具有基于纺织品的传感器和用于收集数据的软机器人执行器的生物医学功能织物)之间的巨大变化。实现无缝远程医疗和远程驱动治疗)。尤其是，无源射频识别(RFID)的使用对于高密度部署是一种使能技术，因为每个功能结构设备将不需要电池或笨重的收发器电子设备。我们将在理论和实现之间采取平衡的方法，开发基于无源RFID的功能结构和相关传感器解决方案的架构。功能结构的密度将比传统的RFID网络大得多，这需要一个由认知RFID询问器组成的协调网络，该网络使用空间和频谱自由度来隔离单个设备。无源RFID传感器设备提供与物联网服务的伪周期性连接，并提供独立于支持基础设施对物理环境进行采样和报告的能力。将考虑此支持基础设施的消息集中协议。启用这些网络将需要对用于RFID架构的物理层(PHY)和介质访问控制(MAC)层设计做出具有挑战性的假设，我们将利用灵活的软件定义无线电(SDR)上的网络建模和原型的组合来建议新的物联网架构和协议。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Functional fabrics are textiles designed to perform a wide variety of functions with applications ranging from medicine and sports to realizing the potential of textile-based smart devices (e.g., clothing, drapes, upholstery) as sensor networks within the Internet of Things (IoT). One particularly compelling application of functional fabrics is in the area of wearables for the IoT, which are becoming ubiquitous. Coupled with pervasive access to smart phones and wireless Internet, they are enabling exciting new application domains, notably in smart homes and wearable health systems. The next generation of wearables for the Internet of Things are likely to be fully integrated into textiles, turning the fabric into garment and textile devices. The applications that functional fabrics will enable, leveraging the networking technologies that will be developed in this proposal, will vary widely between what will one day be seen as: mundane (e.g., smart drapes with sensors that measure and regulate temperature within a room), convenient (e.g., smart laundry that will help prevent bright colored clothing from being washed with whites), personal / professional productivity (e.g., convergence of functional fabrics with voice and data transceivers for social / work applications), as well as life-changing/saving (e.g., biomedical functional fabrics with textile based sensors and soft robotic actuators for collecting data, enabling seamless telemedicine, and remote actuated treatments). The use of passive radio frequency identification (RFID), in particular, is an enabling technology for high density deployments since each functional fabric device would not require a battery or cumbersome transceiver electronics. We will use a balanced approach between theory and implementation, to develop architectures for passive RFID-based functional fabrics and associated sensor solutions. The density of functional fabrics will be much larger than conventional RFID networks, requiring a coordinated network of cognitive RFID interrogators that use spatial and spectral degrees of freedom to isolate individual devices. Passive RFID sensor devices provide pseudo-periodic connectivity with IoT services and provide the ability to sample and report the physical surroundings independently from supporting infrastructure. Message concentration protocols for this supporting infrastructure will be considered. Enabling these networks will require challenging assumptions that have been made regarding physical layer (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer design for RFID architectures, and we will leverage a combination of network modeling along with prototyping on a flexible software defined radio (SDR) to propose new IoT architectures and protocols.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.