Wide Band Human Body Communication Technology for Wearable and Implantable Robot Control

Jianqing WANG  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E103-B    No.6    pp.628-636
Publication Date: 2020/06/01
Publicized: 2019/12/09
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1587/transcom.2019HMI0001
Type of Manuscript: Special Section INVITED PAPER (Special Section on Information and Communication Technology for IoT/CPS in Medicine and Healthcare)
Category: 
Keyword: 
body area communication,  human body communication,  impulse radio,  wireless robot control,  weak radio power band,  

Full Text: FreePDF(4.7MB)
Summary: 
This paper reviews our developed wide band human body communication technology for wearable and implantable robot control. The wearable and implantable robots are assumed to be controlled by myoelectric signals and operate according to the operator's will. The signal transmission for wearable robot control was shown to be mainly realized by electrostatic coupling, and the signal transmission for implantable robot control was shown to be mainly determined by the lossy frequency-dependent dielectric properties of human body. Based on these basic observations on signal transmission mechanisms, we developed a 10-50MHz band impulse radio transceiver based on human body communication technology, and applied it for wireless control of a robotic hand using myoelectric signals in the first time. In addition, we also examined its applicability to implantable robot control, and evaluated the communication performance of implant signal transmission using a living swine. These experimental results showed that the proposed technology is well suited for detection and transmission of biological signals for wearable and implantable robot control.