RedTacton™:
Human Area Networking Technology:
Ubiquitous services that are genuinely
user-friendly to everyone will require technologies that enable Communication
between people and objects in close proximity.
Focusing on the naturalness, inevitability, and
sense of security conveyed by touching in everyday life, this article describes
human area networking
Technology that enables communication by touching, which
we call RedTacton. Here, the human
body acts as a transmission medium supporting IEEE 802.3 half-duplex
communication at 10 M bit/s. The key component of the transceiver is an
electric-field sensor implemented with an electro optic crystal and laser
light.
what it actually is:Today people can communicate anytime, anywhere, and
with anyone over a cellular phone network.
Moreover, the Internet lets people download immense
quantities of data from remotely located servers to their home computers.
Essentially, these two technologies enable communications between Terminals
located at a distance from each other.
Meanwhile,
all kinds of electronic devices including Personal digital assistants (PDA''s),
pocket video games, and digital cameras are becoming smaller, so People can
carry around or even wear various personal information and communication
appliances during their everyday activities. However, user-friendly ubiquitous
services involve more than just networking between remotely located terminals.
Communication between electronic devices on the human body (wearable computers)
and ones embedded in our everyday environments is also critical, so this has driven extensive research and development on
human area networks.
Wired connections between electronic devices in human
area networks are cumbersome and can easily become entangled. Short-range wireless
communication systems such as Blue tooth and wireless local area networks (IEEE
802.11b, etc.) have some problems. Throughput is reduced by packet collisions
in crowded spaces such as meeting rooms and auditoriums filled with people and
communication is not secure because signals can be intercepted.
The principle drawback of infrared communications (Ir DA) is the
tight directionality of beams between terminals needed for the system to be
effective. The ultimate human area network solution to all these constraints of
conventional technologies is “intra body” communication, in which the human body
serves as the transmission medium.
In ubiquitous Services (which imply communication between electronic
devices embedded in the environment in close proximity to people), if we could
use the human body itself as a transmission medium, then this would be an ideal
way of implementing human area networks because it would solve at a stroke all
the problems including throughput reduction, low security, and high network
setup costs. The concept of intra body communication, which uses the minute
electric field propagated by the
Human body to transmit information was first proposed by IBM
<1>. The communication mechanism has subsequently been evaluated and reported
by several research groups around the world.
However, all those reported technologies had two limitations:
1) The operating range through the body
was limited to a few tens of centimeters.
2)
The top communication speed was only 40 K bit/s. These limitations arise from
the use of an electrical sensor for the receiver. An electrical
Sensor
requires two lines (a signal line and a ground line), whereas in intra body communication
there is essentially only one signal line, i.e., the body itself, which leads
to an unbalanced transmission line, so the signal is
not transmitted correctly.
The name we chose for this technology is derived from
“touch-act-on” meaning “action triggered by touching” combined with red, which
in Japanese culture is an auspicious color with connotatio
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