1.10 Infographic photo of the Google Smart Lens©.
Source: Photo courtesy of Google Inc.
In summary, the applications of wearable technology are extremely powerful and they are evolving rapidly. It is crystal clear that this technology is here to stay.
1.1.5 Challenges
While the IoT and wearable technology continue to transform our lives in the twenty‐first century, significant challenges that could stand in the way of realizing its full potential are coming to light. Below are the major challenges that require full attention:
1.1.5.1 Security
Security is one of the cornerstones of the Internet and is the most significant challenge for IoT and wearable devices. The hacking of fitness trackers, security cameras, baby monitors, and other abuses has drawn the attention and serious concerns of major tech firms and government agencies across the world.
While security considerations are not new in the realm of information technology, the characteristics of many IoT and wearable technology deployments introduce new and unprecedented security challenges. Addressing these challenges and ensuring secure IoT and wearable products and services must be a top priority. As these technologies are becoming more pervasive and integrated into our daily lives, users need to be assured that these devices and associated data are secure from vulnerabilities such as cyber‐attacks and data exposure.
The more consequential shift in security will come from the fact that IoT and wearable technology will become more integrated into our daily activities. Concerns will no longer be limited to protecting our sensitive data and assets. Our own lives and health can become the target of malicious attacks.
This challenge is further amplified by other considerations such as the mass‐scale production of identical devices, the ability of some devices to be automatically paired with other devices, and the potential deployment of these devices in unsecure environments.
1.1.5.2 Privacy
While many of the emerging IoT and wearable technologies are giving rise to a spectrum of new applications and innovative uses, as well as promising and attractive benefits, they also pose privacy concerns that are largely unexplored. In fact, a new research area concerning the security and privacy of these technologies has recently emerged. Additionally, the need for the majority of wearable devices and a good number of IoT systems to interact and share data with an access point (i.e. a smart watch to smartphone, medical monitoring device to a home server, smart bulb to an ambient home assistant) along with other sensors and peripherals would certainly create a new class of privacy and security hazards.
Some IoT and wearable devices deploy various sensors to collect a wide spectrum of biological, environmental, behavioral, and social information from and for their users. Clearly, the more these devices are incorporated into our daily lives, the greater the amount of sensitive information will be transported, stored, and processed by these devices, which also elevate privacy concerns.
Moreover, integrated voice recognition or monitoring features are continuously listening to conversations or video record activities and selectively transmit such potentially sensitive data to a cloud service for processing, which sometimes involves a third party. Handling and interacting with such information unveil legal and regulatory challenges facing data protection and privacy laws.
One specific privacy concern associated with the emerging smart glasses is that they allow users to simultaneously record and share images and videos of people and their activities in their range of vision, in real time. This problem will soon be intensified when such devices are integrated with facial recognition programs which will allow users to see the person's name in the field of view, personal information, and even visit their social media accounts.
1.1.5.3 Standards and Regulations
The lack of standards and best practices documentations poses a major limitation to the potential of IoT and wearable devices. Without standards to guide manufacturers and developers, these products that often operate in a disruptive manner would lead to interoperability issues and might have negative impacts if poorly designed and configured. Such devices can have adverse consequences on the network resources they connect to and the broader Internet. Unfortunately, most of this comes down to cost constraints and the pressuring need to release a product to the market quicker than competitors. Moreover, there is a wide range of regulatory and legal questions surrounding the IoT and wearable technology, which require thoughtful consideration.
Legal issues with IoT and wearable devices may include conflicts between governmental surveillance and civil rights; policies of data retention and destruction; legal liability/penalty for unintended uses; and security breaches or privacy abuses. Furthermore, technology is advancing much faster than the associated policy and regulatory environments which might render policies and regulations to be inappropriate.
Big data presents another serious challenge. The analysis, extraction, manipulation, storage, and processing of substantial amounts of data may pose other legal problems as in profiling, behavior analysis, and monitoring. Big data may require new protection policies, international coordination, and infrastructure management, among others.
Furthermore, the cloud and even the Internet itself are not tied to one specific geographic location. Moreover, the sheer amount of IoT and wearable devices originate from a number of different sources, including international partners and vendors, which makes it impossible for a localized regulatory authority to enforce quality control or standardized tests.
As yet, these challenges have been minimally acted upon by policy makers. However, they reflect a pressing necessity to seek government solutions to both pronounce the strengths of these technologies and deploy policies to minimize their risks.
1.1.5.4 Energy and Power Issues
The increase in data rates and the number of Internet‐enabled services and the exponential growth of IoT and wearable devices are leading to a substantial increase in network energy consumption.
Moreover, the push toward smaller size and lower power is creating more signal and power integrity problems in IoT and wearable devices. Common issues include mutual coupling, distortion, excessive losses, impedance mismatch, and generator noise. Failure to deal with these issues can have detrimental effects on these devices.
1.1.5.5 Connectivity
According to recent research reports, around 22 billion IoT and wearable devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020. Thus, it is just a matter of time before users begin to experience substantial bottlenecks in IoT connectivity, proficiency, and overall performance.
Currently, a big percentage of connected devices rely on centralized and server/client platforms to authenticate, authorize, and connect additional nodes in a given network. This model is sufficient for now, but as additional billions of devices join the network, such platforms will turn into a bottleneck. Such systems will require improved cloud servers that can handle such large amounts of information traffic. This is already being addressed by the academic and industrial community which is pushing toward decentralized networks. With such networks, some of the tasks are moved to the edge, such as using fog computing, which takes charge of time‐sensitive operations (this will be discussed in detail in chapter 7), whereas cloud servers take on data assembly and analytical responsibilities.
1.2 Conclusion
IoT and wearable devices are enabled by the latest developments in smart sensors, embedded systems, and communication technologies and protocols. The fundamental premise is to have sensors and