Abstract
Human body communication is expected to be a viable new transmission method for networks between wearable devices working together in a body area network (BAN). Wearable devices demand long battery life, small size, and light weight. Therefore, it is important to investigate the input impedance characteristics of the electrodes and design the electrode structure in such a way as to improve the communication qualities. The characteristics of the human body are important for designing the antennas (electrodes) used for close range communication in a human body communication system. Normally, homogenous muscle phantoms are used for measuring the input impedance characteristics of these antennas. However, nobody has measured the input impedance characteristics of electrodes for human body communication at a frequency of 10 MHz using phantoms that take into account the actual tissue structure of the human body. Therefore, it is necessary to measure the impedance characteristics using phantoms which consider skin, fat, and muscle. In this study, changes in the input impedance characteristics were analyzed considering the electrical properties of a phantom containing muscle and fat. Moreover we tried to develop a human muscle and fat phantom for human body communication system available at a frequency of 10 MHz.
