WearDrive: Fast and Energy-Efficient Storage for Wearables

Size and weight constraints on wearables limit their bat-tery capacity and restrict them from providing rich func-tionality. The need for durable and secure storage for personal data further compounds this problem as these features incur energy-intensive operations. This paper presents WearDrive, a fast storage system for wearables based on battery-backed RAM and an efficient means to offload energy intensive tasks to the phone. WearDrive leverages low-power network connectivity available on wearables to trade the phone’s battery for the wearable’s by performing large and energy-intensive tasks on the phone while performing small and energy-efficient tasks locally using battery-backed RAM. WearDrive improves the performance of wearable applications by up to 8.85x and improves battery life up to 3.69x with negligible im-pact to the phone’s battery life.