Measurement results and analysis on a HBC channel

Human body communication (HBC) is a communication technology that uses the body of a person as a channel to propagate signals. Many characteristics of HBC present advantages over the most common radiation-based methods, which makes it an interesting alternative to implement the emergent body area networks. The characterization of the HBC channel presented in the literature still cannot provide a good and complete explanation for the channel behavior. In this work, we present our attempt to characterize the channel. A measurement setup was set up to properly preserve the HBC capacitive coupling and to investigate the impact of the test fixtures. The results show that the channel has a band-pass response, with dependence in channel length, and small variation for different electrode types, temporal variability or subjects. The results also indicate that the test apparatus has a non-negligible influence in the channel profile.