Wearable Communications in 5G: Challenges and Enabling Technologies

As wearable devices become more ingrained in our daily lives, traditional communication networks primarily designed for human-being-oriented applications are facing tremendous challenges. The forthcoming fifth-generation (5G) wireless systems look to support unprecedented high capacity, low latency, and massive connectivity. In this article, we examine key challenges facing wearable communication devices. A cloud/edge communication architecture that integrates the cloud radio access network (CRAN), software-defined network (SDN), device-to-device (D2D) communications, and cloud/edge technologies is presented. Computation offloading enabled by this multilayer communications architecture can offload computation-excessive and latency-stringent applications to nearby devices through D2D communications or to nearby edge nodes through cellular or other wireless technologies. Critical issues faced by wearable communications, e.g., short battery life, limited computing capability, and stringent latency, can be greatly alleviated by this cloud/edge architecture. Together with the presented architecture, current transmission and networking technologies [including nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA), mobile edge computing (MCE), and energy harvesting] can greatly enhance the performance of wearable communications in terms of spectral efficiency, energy efficiency, latency, and connectivity.