Personal mobile hub

Abstract

As advances are made in wearable computing, there is a need for a personal mobile hub that can manage interactions between the wearable devices and act as a proxy for these devices. In this paper we describe why this is a good model, why the interfaces need to be open, and why different parties in the value chain, such as wireless service providers and device manufacturers, may prefer such architecture. Our personal mobile hub supports multiple wireless protocols, some short range and some wide area so that the power of the Internet is available even to body worn sensors. We describe custom hardware that we built for this purpose and also the software necessary to make this concept work. We have tested out this architecture with an end-to-end application. The working system was demonstrated at the annual IBM Stockholders meeting in 2004 and is also available for customers to see at the IBM Industry Solutions Lab in Zurich.