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.