Wireless enabled clothing: New modular technologies and overall supply chain impact

The present times exhibit a significant stabilization of the mobile terminals and smartphones uptake rate, still fueled mostly by wireless infrastructure, applications and electronic component evolution. Commodization processes apply to all three, without any rethinking of the core user terminal concept realization. At the same time, from the psychological and sociological sides, mobile terminals are becoming deeply ingrained into personal behaviors even if appearing as a device separate from the human body. Has time come to « hide the device » and instead embed the communications functionality into the closest interface to the body which is clothing, while capitalizing on substantial progresses made in some other technological fields than electronics and software? This would also significantly free human tactile and visual attentions, as shown by early prototypes in professional [1] or defense niche segments [2]. It would also fundamentally largely decouple the wireless usages from electrical power capacity pitfalls. The wireless clothing would become the human's second skin.

Next, if the communications functionality would be embedded into human clothing, completely different manufacturing and distribution channels would emerge, which have long achieved major skills in commodization as well as personalization (retail stores, platforms of e-tailers, fashion designs). A key question is whether the achievable production costs of communications functionality embedded in clothing would be competitive with those of the current mobile terminals industry. This paper addresses the technological and cost feasibility of communications functionality embedded in clothing, revisiting largely unexploited recent technological breakthroughs in some other domains then consumer electronics, especially architecture, textile technology and renewable power. It is about how to free your hands and attention, so that you and your body alone can be extended with wireless communications and media access. This present research is not about wearable computing, smart watches and wearables [3][4], medical smart fabrics, intelligent textiles [5], or Internet-of-Things. The connectivity to the Internet or the cloud for most of these wearables is still through a smartphone via a Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or ZigBee link, a configuration not addressed here.

To simplify terminology, « Wireless clothing » is the short-cut designation in this paper for modular wireless multi-network access embedded in clothing, with possible extensions beyond communications. This research has addressed the required novel technologies, architecture, design, manufacturing and economic feasibility of wireless communications functionality embedded in clothing, taking into account innovations in that industry and real data. Therefore, it should be of no surprise to the reader that the references are dominated by technological realizations by niche start-ups, and by large collaborative industrial projects.

Table 1 summarizes some recent user-and usage-driven paradigm shifts. It shows that wireless clothing is one way forward, besides gadgets like smartwatches and other specialized electronic communication devices coupled to the body (helmets, glasses, etc…). While it has specific limitations (Section 3.6), the special appeal of wireless clothing is that it has less of the drawbacks linked to user interface size and dependence on use of human attentive vision.

A number of technological achievements or research results have been achieved over the few recent years, which all have a high relevance for wireless clothing. They are briefly described below in combination, as it is a portfolio of such technologies, and of pre-existing electronic components, which constitute the technology platform needed to realize wireless clothing.

-Passive components embedded into rigid and flexible substrates [6]; -Vacuum roll-to-roll process for flexible OLED / Amoled displays; flexible or curved OLED displays (already commercialized) (Samsung Galaxy Round, LG Electronics G Flex 2); -Research projects on foldable graphene based displays; -OLED high contrast displays with photo emitting molecules and low consumption; -Flexible LED dot arrays for wearable color announcements or push buttons (already commercialized); -Miniature GPS/ GNSS antennas and circuits (already commercialized); -Miniature encapsulated MEMS sensors with sub-threshold CMOS circuits (already commercialized); -RFID passive tags for system configuration; -Bluetooth smart (1 cm2 all-in-one for sensor, radio, antenna) (standardized and commercialized); -Flexible 16/32 bit asynchronous processors via thin film transistors and nanowires ( [7] and Epson); -New know-how about on-body antennas and propagation; -Folded ultra-thin camera lenses [8]; -Self-cleaning screen displays with nanoparticles; -Super elastic electronic circuits using an AuGa film [9][10]; -Flexible Li-Ion battery (Samsung); -Flexible flash memory with organic

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