An Android Wear OS Framework for Sensor Data and Network Interfaces
Today, there are many wearable devices on the market whichsimplify our everyday life. This technology includes deviceslike activity trackers, smart glasses, and smartwatches. Mostly,these devices are connected to our smartphone, helping us tomake communication in our public life easier and faster.Wearable devices feature an abundance of sensors andnetwork interfaces that mostly remain unchallenged. Thisis due to the habits of an average user which are mainlycharacterized by getting notifications of incoming messagesor receiving weather news. Thus, the question arises how touse a wearable device’s hidden potential, mainly to improvethe functionality and user experience of handset applications.Furthermore, this research will try to explore the possibilitiesand limits current wearable devices bring to be able to assesstheir capabilities.To this end, the idea came up to design a solution that makesit possible to use corresponding wearable functions efficiently.The design should enable developers and users to accesswearable interfaces and sensors remotely via mobile phone.The so far unchallenged wearable should thus become a newsource of information from which we can obtain additionaldata. Using this additional data raises the possibility to developnew functions and improve existing ones on the mobile phone.We motivate the realization of this idea by the challenges inour network applicationopptain[4].opptainis an applicationfor Android that uses Opportunistic Networking [7] for localdata exchange.opptainmanages its data exchange betweenclients via Wi-Fi. If a network node is a hotspot in thenetwork, it can only accept incoming requests but not scanfor available participants at the same time; and if two hotspotsmeet, they will not see each other. A problem is the Wi-Fichip on Android devices, which can only either be hotspotor client at the same time. With the help of a second Wi-Fimodule, the one in the wearable device, we can solve thisproblem. In general, the framework creates a solid base ofinformation generated by our wearable. We can use thisinformation for similar problems without being limited toWi-Fi or specific topics like Opportunistic Networking. Acommon field of research is the use of the wearables’ bodysensors [2]. These can be used to monitor vital signs ofpatients and automatically call for help in emergencies Code Shoppy
The contribution of this work is a library that can beintegrated into present and future Android projects. Theintuitive usage of this framework allows future developersto focus on realizing their idea rather than dealing withimplementation difficulties to gain desired data. Theimplementation allows the user to access network interfacesand sensor and control element functions of the wearableand to transfer corresponding data to the mobile application.Through the various services that can be accessed, we createa broad information base on the side of the mobile phonewhich can be involved in future computation. This additionalknowledge enables the user to make better decisions thatfinally improve the usability and functionality of the mobileapplication itself. Considering that most customer complainsaddress functionality problems or functionality request [6],the need for our framework is emphasized
The contribution of this work is a library that can beintegrated into present and future Android projects. Theintuitive usage of this framework allows future developersto focus on realizing their idea rather than dealing withimplementation difficulties to gain desired data. Theimplementation allows the user to access network interfacesand sensor and control element functions of the wearableand to transfer corresponding data to the mobile application.Through the various services that can be accessed, we createa broad information base on the side of the mobile phonewhich can be involved in future computation. This additionalknowledge enables the user to make better decisions thatfinally improve the usability and functionality of the mobileapplication itself. Considering that most customer complainsaddress functionality problems or functionality request [6],the need for our framework is emphasized
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Sec-tion II discusses fundamental knowledge. In Section III, weprovide the idea as well as the demands and design of theframework, and in Section IV, we focus on the implementationin detail. Section V will take a look at the performance of thecreated network and how participation affects the devices. InSection VI, we give a conclusion based on the results gainedand give an outlook on future work.II. FUNDAMENTALSTo motivate our work, the first part of this section explainsOpportunistic Networks in more detail. Essential for this workis the second part, in which we will define the termThe An-droid Wear OS Network. Its purpose is to illustrate the structurethat our mobile and wearable devices create. Furthermore, weexplain which functionality the network provides using theGoogle Play Services.A. Opportunistic NetworksBasic networks as we know them are mostly wired struc-tures where a node can communicate with every other nodeconnected to this network, no matter how far the distancebetween them. The topology of these networks is mostly staticand hierarchical. In contrast to this idea, there are networkscalled Opportunistic Networks (OppNets) [7]. An OppNet isan ad-hoc network of wirelessly connected nodes in whichdata is shared on opportunistic contacts. The communicationrange is limited, and nodes can only directly connect to othernodes nearby. Thus, the topology of the network is highlyflexible. This results in a possible lack of communicationroutes between nodes participating in a network and OppNetsare therefore characterized as delay tolerant networks.B. The Android Wear OS NetworkThe Android Wear OS Network describes the structure thatthe handset and Wear devices forge. Each of these devices isa node, and the communication link between these nodes areboth Wi-Fi and Bluetooth completing the network. We willnow explain how a device can take part in the network andhow its task is determined.The Google Play Service is a background service made upof a client library and a collection of different APIs whichcan be used by application developers. Popular features ofthe client library are for exampleGoogle MapsandGoogle+.The Google Play Service is provided by the Google PlayStore and updates do not depend on carrier or OEM systemimage updates. This allows Google Inc. to distribute updatesto their users fast, helping developers to use the latest versionsof libraries and APIs for their projects. One of the APIsbrought by the Google Play Service is theWearableAPI.Each application using this API will enter theWear Network.Therefore this step is also calledAccessing the Wearable DataLayer
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