Next-Generation Pervasive Wearable Communication: Models, Protocols, and Emerging Trends

Abstract

Pervasive wearable communication has become a foundation of ubiquitous computing in the present day that facilitates continuous data communication among wearable devices, users, and digital infrastructures. This survey explores the wearable communication models including their architectures, protocols, applications, challenges and future directions. The research explores the basic elements of the wearable systems, such as sensors, microcontrollers, communication modules and energy sources, with focus on the peculiarities of mobility, energy constraints and real-time demands. The most important communication models, which are device-to-device, device-to-infrastructure, multi-hop, opportunistic, and hybrid architectures, are explored to demonstrate how they are applicable to various applications in healthcare, fitness, workplaces, industrial automation, smart cities, and immersive technologies. Enabling protocols and technologies, such as BLE, NFC, UWB, ZigBee, 5G/6G, and LPWAN, and the emerging trends, such as AI-driven communication, energy harvesting, privacy-preserving mechanisms and collaborative wearable networks, are also analyzed in the paper. Also, the issues of energy efficiency, latency, interference, scalability, security, and interoperability are discussed to determine the gaps in the research. Lastly, the survey describe the future directions that focus on intelligent, adaptive, secure, and user-centered wearable ecosystems.