LTE D2D communication for collaborative wearable sensor networks: A connectivity analysis

While the demand for wearable sensor devices is going to rise significantly in the near future, Long Term Evolution (LTE) chips are becoming progressively less expensive and rich in functionalities, suggesting for a strong integration between these two technologies. Moreover, the introduction of the Device-to-Device (D2D) feature in LTE envisages direct communication for basically any kind of device, and wearable sensors can be one of those. In this way, collaborative applications based on wearable sensors would benefit from the extended range and higher throughput offered by LTE. However, when sensor devices achieve cellular coverage, security of direct links and of wearable applications become crucial. In particular, especially in critical and emergency scenarios, direct connectivity has to be guaranteed to all the nodes. Starting from this requirement and using a secure LTE D2D protocol, in this paper we provide the analytical and simulation results in terms of achievable connectivity for a possible deployment of a LTE-enabled collaborative wearable network for emergency or extreme sport applications.