Approaching direction detection of human arm using human body communication technology

Human body can be considered as a communication channel in which the electric field propagates around the body as an approximated surface wave, which is known as human body communication (HBC). HBC is superior to other wireless communications from the point of view of electromagnetic compatibility. Since the human body acts as a conductor below a few tens of MHz, one can detect the existence of human body by measuring the corresponding electric filed variation in close proximity of the human body. In this study, we made an effort to detect the approaching direction of human arm based on the HBC principle under the assumption of application to a user-machine interface. We also conducted an experimental validation for our simulation result, and attempted to provide an appropriate explanation of this detection system with an equivalent circuit model.