Feasibility test of deformable BAN electrodes in ear canal

Implantable and portable medical devices have attracted much interest in recent years and the interconnections of these devices have become an important issue. One interconnection method is the use of the body access network (BAN) that does not need high power consumption as conventional radio frequency communication methods. Previous studies of the BAN have focused on measuring between the chest, wrist and other surface parts of the skin which are easily accessible with conventional electrodes. Deformable BAN electrodes are implemented to study the effectiveness of BAN communications in the ear canal. Conventional earphones and Bluetooth devices can easily access the ear canal and could be used for the BAN communication channel. The experimental results show various transmission loss among the ear canal, the wrist and the chest. The lowest attenuation showed as 23 dB at 34 MHz.