Challenges and opportunities in electronic textiles modeling and optimization

This paper addresses an emerging new field of research that combines the strengths and capabilities of electronics and textiles in one: electronic textiles, or e-textiles. E-textiles, also called Smart Fabrics, have not only "wearable" capabilities like any other garment, but also local monitoring and computation, as well as wireless communication capabilities. Sensors and simple computational elements are embedded in e-textiles, as well as built into yarns, with the goal of gathering sensitive information, monitoring vital statistics and sending them remotely (possibly over a wireless channel) for further processing. Possible applications include medical (infant or patient) monitoring, personal information processing systems, or remote monitoring of deployed personnel in military or space applications. We illustrate the challenges imposed by the dual textile/electronics technology on their modeling and optimization methodology.