Human-centric connectivity enabled by body-coupled communications

Authors

H. Baldus, S. Corroy, A. Fazzi, K. Klabunde, T. Schenk,

Abstract

        With the growing number of mobile devices surrounding a person s body, there is an increasing need to connect this electronic equipment efficiently into a wireless body-area network. In this article we review the body-coupled communications technology, which we show to be a viable basis for future BANs. In BCC, the human body is used as a signal propagation medium, which provides a key benefit the communication is centered around the user and limited to his or her close proximity, that is, this technology provides human-centric connectivity. This enables unique applications that are illustrated in this work. Moreover, we outline the fundamental properties of the BCC technology and provide different trade-offs and challenges for modulation and protocol design. This article also discusses the outlook for BCC and suggests a number of important research topics.

BibTEX Reference Entry 

@article{BaCoFaKlSc09,
	author = {Heribert Baldus and Steven Corroy and Alberto Fazzi and Karin Klabunde and Tim Schenk},
	title = "Human-centric connectivity enabled by body-coupled communications",
	pages = "172-178",
	journal = "{IEEE} Communications Magazine",
	volume = "47",
	number = "6",
	month = Jun,
	year = 2009,
	hsb = hsb910012531,
	}

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