Apple Watch is trending towards full-body sensor networks.

The new Apple watch, recently introduced to the public, began with a simple marketing campaign. On Apple's website, they state, "To make the best use of its size and location on your wrist, Apple Watch has all-new interactions and technologies. They let you do familiar things more quickly and conveniently, as well as some things that weren't impossible. So, using it is a whole new experience. One that’s more personal than ever. Our most personal device yet.”

The Apple watch will push the electronics industry to further miniaturization in designing a more efficient low-power digital sensor architecture. The Apple watch and technology like it will move the body sensor network to be entirely accepted by the public.

The technological advances in the design of low-power digital wireless architectures and component miniaturization have been going on for years. The sensor designs have been extensively studied in the context of environmental monitoring, security of buildings and public spaces, traffic monitoring, smart homes, and even more recently, health monitoring.

The current state of Body area sensor networks represents the recent evolution of technology for developing the new generation of human-computer interface sensors. The tie into the already established sensor world and our interaction with that environment is a logical technological progression. More recently, sensor research has enabled the development of small form factor devices that could be mounted on wearable nodes and communicate to each other and to a sensor integration unit, which can be either a mobile device such as a cellular phone or a tablet. Like traditional wired sensor networks, body sensors collect information about the environment and the human body that can correlate data for monitoring and actuation purposes.

Current manufacturing design and technology trends are moving us to full human monitoring capabilities and our environmental interaction. If you believe Facebook knows too much about you now, wait and see what advertisements they will push to you from the information they will gather on you and your body sensor network in the future.  While working on my doctoral research in wireless sensors, I believed there were many years before complete body monitoring in 24-hour cycles could occur. Moreover, the societal acceptance of 24-hour monitoring,I believe, was even further out in time. When you put all the recent technology in context, I now believe we are on our way to full monitoring of our daily activities. As an example, let us look at Google Glass. With Mapping and picture ability or wristband sensors that monitor your sleep pattern, how much you walk, and the best-suggested path to take. 

Marketing and Fad are speeding up the desired use of body sensor networks daily. Marketing and Socially engineered products are driving our market acceptance as well as our social acceptance of 24-hour personal monitoring as a norm.  The next logical step in body sensors is correlating Apple Watch data with business and marketing. For example, if a user becomes hungry and the device monitors brain waves, instantly within the brain, a series of sensory metabolic and neurochemical responses fire off. The personal monitoring device and sensor nodes will pick up the brain activity and suggest a good place to eat within the surrounding environment and location. (Without the user asking for a restaurant location) Body-based sensors can exploit real-time tracking of body movement and may be used for rehabilitation shortly. Another example involves collaborative workspaces. Imagine in the future, the body sensor networks creating a collaborative workspace where the body sensors and your watch could bridge to an external network that monitors the surrounding environment. Users can interact and collaborate through company or social networks. And, of course, entertainment and cultural applications can finally profit from enhanced, immense, immersive sensor technology through user-sensor interaction in virtual games 3-D artificial world. The speed and development of the body sensor network in the 21st century will increase as the acceptance of wearable sensors becomes the norm in society. These are just some of the examples of innovative applications yet to come.