A dependable infrastructure of the electric network for e-textiles

Electronic textiles, known as computational fabrics, offer an emerging method for constructing wearable and large area applications. Because e-textiles are battery-driven and fault-prone systems, there is a need for developing a dependable infrastructure of the electric networks for e-textiles. In this paper, a new infrastructure of the power networks for e-textiles, flexible power network (FPN), is presented. Instead of drawing power from a fixed battery as in the conventional electric networks, the power consuming nodes in a FPN can obtain power energy from one of the choices of batteries available with the help of the battery selectors. We also introduce the over current protectors into the battery nodes (BN) to protect the batteries from wasting the charge when short-circuit faults occur. The electric features of battery selectors and over current protectors, the two types of important electric devices used in FPNs, are illustrated in the paper. We have performed simulation experiments and the results show that our FPNs are more dependable than some common electric networks published before in the cases of short- and open-circuit faults.