CSR-EHCS(EHS), SM: Investigating a Novel Embedded Processor Architecture for Electonic Textiles in Wearable and Pervasive Computing

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to explore novel embedded processor architectures for electronic textiles (e-textiles). E-textiles are intelligent fabrics where sensors and computation are intrinsic to the cloth, with applications in medicine, entertainment, and sports. E-textiles occupy an extremely constrained point in the embedded system design space, having a large number of networked sensors and processors distributed throughout the fabric and tight requirements on performance, energy consumption, and reliability. Research at the Virginia Tech E-textiles Lab has shown that a Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) approach allows designers to effectively manage the complexity of the e-textile design space, which includes issues such as fiber selection, the weave pattern, the physical topology of the electrical/communication network in the fabric, the number/type/location of sensor/actuator nodes, the number and type of computational nodes, the system software organization, and the application algorithms. However, an MDE approach does not yield an implementation that is easily portable while being power- and performance-efficient, due to a fundamental mismatch between the MDE design specification and the target microprocessors. The approach in this project is to develop an event-driven computer architecture family that presents an abstraction that is well-matched to the MDE design specification. The potential benefits of this project include using the architecture family to improve the reliability, design cost, and energy efficiency of embedded systems besides e-textiles. The broader impacts of the project include e-textile applications in medical monitoring, wearable computing, and pervasive computing. Educational benefits include providing undergraduate and graduate students with multidisciplinary research experience.