Modeling and Electrodes Design for Human Body Communication in Head-Mounted Wearable Devices

Abstract

　Human body communication, which utilizes our body as part of the transmission medium, has received a lot of attention as a promising wireless technology for body area network such as communication in head-mounted wearable devices. In this paper, input impedance characteristics of transceiver electrodes, transmission characteristics and electric field distributions around the head model were investigated through an electromagnetic field analysis for clarify a transmission mechanism of human body communication between head-mounted wearable devices. The analysis results showed that the signal frequency had little effect on the transmission characteristics and electric field distributions in the frequency of 10, 20, 30 MHz. However, it was found that the transmission mechanism between head-mounted wearable devices is influenced by the number of electrode of transceiver. Moreover, impedance matched transceiver was designed for improving the transmission characteristics. These results suggest that the optimized transceiver can realize the human body communication with low-power consumption and low electromagnetic exposure for human.