Clarification of transmission mechanism in Human body communication between head-mounted wearable devices with detailed model

Facing an aging society, body area network (BAN) is expected to play a greater role in improving a quality of life of the elderly and people with disabilities Human body communication (HBC) which utilizes a part of human body as a transmission medium has been drawn much attention as a promising wireless technology for BAN. Communication between head mounted wearable devices such as hearing aids is one of the prospective applications of HBC. In this study, for clarify a transmission mechanism of HBC between head-mounted wearable devices, input impedance characteristics of transceiver antennas (electrodes), transmission characteristics and electric field distributions around the detailed head model were investigated through an electromagnetic field analysis. The analysis results showed that the signal frequency had little effect on the transmission characteristics and electric field distributions in the frequency of 10, 20, 30 MHz. However, it was found that the transmission mechanism between head-mounted wearable devices is influenced by the number of electrode of transceiver.