WiHub: Wearable Intelligent Communication Hub

The huge growth in mobile industry including smartphones and tablets, wearable devices, and the internet of things, caused an explosion in the number of sensor technologies and sensory data. This growth was accompanied by huge leaps in wireless communication technologies in term of speed and geographical coverage. When a highly-trained first responder arrives at an incident scene, an array of communication tools such as land mobile radio (LMR), smartphone and other available communication devices and sensors can overwhelm and distract the first responder. Furthermore, wireless communication can be sporadic at times, with some networks unavailable especially in disaster areas. Architecture Technology Corporation proposes to build WiHub: a wearable intelligent communication hub that is capable of encapsulating and abstracting all of the underlying available communication channels and sensors providing an easy to use plug-and-play interface to help first responders focus on their job rather than managing and configuring the set of devices they have at the scene. If more than one communication link is available, the hub will automatically pick the best route during data transmission, auto-detect link quality and failure and reroute data accordingly without the need for user intervention. The objective of the communication hub is to dissolve the barrier between responders and the many available sources of critical information. The results of Phase I will be three WiHub prototypes with capability demonstration showing their ability to connect to sensors and to utilize available communication links. Phase II completion will add complete auto-detection and auto-configuration features for sensors, networks.