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

功能性织物是被设计成执行各种各样的功能的纺织品，其应用范围从医学和运动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）内的传感器网络。功能性织物的一个特别引人注目的应用是物联网的可穿戴设备领域，这些设备正在变得无处不在。再加上智能手机和无线互联网的普及，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健康系统中。物联网的下一代可穿戴设备可能会完全集成到纺织品中，将织物变成服装和纺织设备。 功能结构将支持的应用程序，利用将在本提案中开发的网络技术，将在有一天被视为：平凡（例如，具有测量和调节房间内温度的传感器的智能窗帘），方便（例如，将有助于防止亮色衣物与白色衣物一起洗涤的智能洗衣机），个人/专业生产力（例如，功能结构与用于社会/工作应用的语音和数据收发器的融合），以及改变生活/拯救生活（例如，生物医学功能织物，其具有基于纺织品的传感器和用于收集数据的软机器人致动器，实现无缝远程医疗和远程致动治疗）。特别地，无源射频识别（RFID）的使用是用于高密度部署的使能技术，因为每个功能性织物设备将不需要电池或笨重的收发器电子器件。我们将使用理论和实现之间的平衡方法，开发基于无源RFID的功能织物和相关传感器解决方案的架构。功能织物的密度将远远大于传统的RFID网络，需要一个协调的认知RFID询问器网络，使用空间和光谱自由度来隔离各个设备。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的物理环境采样和报告的能力。将考虑这种支持基础设施的消息集中协议。启用这些网络将需要对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，我们将在灵活的软件定义无线电（SDR）上利用网络建模沿着和原型设计的组合提出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学术价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

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.