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Intra-body data transmission for the personal area network

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Abstract

Intra-body communication is a wireless means of exchanging information within a personal area network (PAN) between wearable electronic sensors and devices. The feasibility of intra-body communication is confirmed through several experiments on signal propagation within the human body, and a human phantom is designed and used to obtain reproducible results over repeated experiments. Based on the results of these experiments, a prototype transmission system is constructed using aluminum electrodes powered by 3 V DC and operating in the 10.7 MHz frequency modulation (FM) band. This prototype is demonstrated to be capable of transmitting analog signals through the human subjects in the presence of external noise. Digital data transmission at 9600 bps is also achieved using newly fabricated 10.7 MHz frequency shift keying (FSK) transmitter and receiver devices. The carrier frequency of 10.7 MHz is the intermediate frequency of FM radio receivers, meaning that the proposed system can make use of a wide selection of inexpensive, commercial radio frequency devices.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Environmental Studies, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan

    Keisuke Hachisuka, Teruhito Takeda, Yusuke Terauchi, Ken Sasaki, Hiroshi Hosaka & Kiyoshi Itao

Authors
  1. Keisuke Hachisuka
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  2. Teruhito Takeda
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  3. Yusuke Terauchi
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  4. Ken Sasaki
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  5. Hiroshi Hosaka
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  6. Kiyoshi Itao
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Keisuke Hachisuka.

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Hachisuka, K., Takeda, T., Terauchi, Y. et al. Intra-body data transmission for the personal area network. Microsyst Technol 11, 1020–1027 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-005-0500-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-005-0500-1

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