Transmission characteristics between wearable and embedded transceivers based on near-field coupling: Body-channel communication system for human-area networking

We discuss the transmission characteristics of novel body-channel communication that uses the surface of the human body as a communication path. This technology aims to achieve a “touch and connect” intuitive form of communication based on a near-field coupling mechanism using a carrier frequency of 6.75 MHz. Our proposed system is not only composed of transceivers on the body (wearable TRXs) but also transceivers embedded in floors, PCs, and equipment (embedded TRXs). Therefore, our system broadens the fields in which these transceivers can be applied. We measured the packet error rates (PERs) between a wearable TRX and an embedded TRX with a system of evaluation that used two kinds of phantom models to estimate the transmission characteristics of our system. In addition, we found that inserting a common-mode choke coil into the signal path effectively reduced PER.

[1]  Athanasios V. Vasilakos,et al.  Body Area Networks: A Survey , 2010, Mob. Networks Appl..

[2]  Hoi-Jun Yoo,et al.  A 0.9V 2.6mW Body-Coupled Scalable PHY Transceiver for Body Sensor Applications , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers.

[3]  Alberto Fazzi,et al.  A 2.75mW wideband correlation-based transceiver for body-coupled communication , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - Digest of Technical Papers.

[4]  M. Shinagawa,et al.  A near-field-sensing transceiver for intra-body communication based on the electro-optic effect , 2003, Proceedings of the 20th IEEE Instrumentation Technology Conference (Cat. No.03CH37412).

[5]  R. W. Lau,et al.  The dielectric properties of biological tissues: II. Measurements in the frequency range 10 Hz to 20 GHz. , 1996, Physics in medicine and biology.

[6]  Mitsuru Shinagawa,et al.  AC Electric Field Communication for Human-Area Networking , 2010, IEICE Trans. Electron..

[7]  Yuichi Kado.  Human-area networking technology as a universal interface , 2009, 2009 Symposium on VLSI Circuits.

[8]  Hoi-Jun Yoo,et al.  The Human Body Characteristics as a Signal Transmission Medium for Intrabody Communication , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[9]  Thomas G. Zimmerman,et al.  : Near-field , 2022 .

[10]  Hoi-Jun Yoo,et al.  A 0.24-nJ/b Wireless Body-Area-Network Transceiver With Scalable Double-FSK Modulation , 2012, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.