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New Technology Uses Human Body For Broadband Networking
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tomas w
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Mar 21, 2005 12:48 PST
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Dear Friends,
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2005/03/20/2003247076
New technology uses human body for broadband networking
By sending data over the surface of the skin, it may soon be possible to
trade music files by dancing cheek to cheek, or to swap phone numbers by
kissing
By Paul Rubens
THE GUARDIAN , LONDON
Sunday, Mar 20, 2005,Page 12
"I recently acquired my own in-body device -- a pacemaker -- but it
takes a special radio frequency connector to interface to it. As more
and more implants go into bodies, the need for a good Internet Protocol
connection increases."
Gordon Bell, a senior researcher at Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center
in San Francisco
Your body could soon be the backbone of a broadband personal data
network linking your mobile phone or MP3 player to a cordless headset,
your digital camera to a PC or printer, and all the gadgets you carry
around to each other.
These personal area networks are already possible using radio-based
technologies, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, or just plain old cables to
connect devices. But NTT, the Japanese communications company, has
developed a technology called RedTacton, which it claims can send data
over the surface of the skin at speeds of up to 2Mbps -- equivalent to a
fast broadband data connection.
Using RedTacton-enabled devices, music from an MP3 player in your pocket
would pass through your clothing and shoot over your body to headphones
in your ears. Instead of fiddling around with a cable to connect your
digital camera to your computer, you could transfer pictures just by
touching the PC while the camera is around your neck. And since data can
pass from one body to another, you could also exchange electronic
business cards by shaking hands, trade music files by dancing cheek to
cheek, or swap phone numbers just by kissing.
NTT is not the first company to use the human body as a conduit for
data: IBM pioneered the field in 1996 with a system that could transfer
small amounts of data at very low speeds, and last June, Microsoft was
granted a patent for "a method and apparatus for transmitting power and
data using the human body."
But RedTacton is arguably the first practical system because, unlike
IBM's or Microsoft's, it doesn't need transmitters to be in direct
contact with the skin -- they can be built into gadgets, carried in
pockets or bags, and will work within about 20cm of your body. RedTacton
doesn't introduce an electric current into the body -- instead, it makes
use of the minute electric field that occurs naturally on the surface of
every human body. A transmitter attached to a device, such as an MP3
player, uses this field to send data by modulating the field minutely in
the same way that a radio carrier wave is modulated to carry
information.
Receiving data is more complicated because the strength of the electric
field involved is so low. RedTacton gets around this using a technique
called electric field photonics: A laser is passed though an
electro-optic crystal, which deflects light differently according to the
strength of the field across it. These deflections are measured and
converted back into electrical signals to retrieve the transmitted data.
An obvious question, however, is why anyone would bother networking
though their body when proven radio-based personal area networking
technologies, such as Bluetooth, already exist? Tom Zimmerman, the
inventor of the original IBM system, says body-based networking is more
secure than broadcast systems, such as Bluetooth, which have a range of
about 10m.
"With Bluetooth, it is difficult to rein in the signal and restrict it
to the device you are trying to connect to," says Zimmerman. "You
usually want to communicate with one particular thing, but in a busy
place there could be hundreds of Bluetooth devices within range."
As human beings are ineffective aerials, it is very hard to pick up
stray electronic signals radiating from the body, he says. "This is good
for security because even if you encrypt data it is still possible that
it could be decoded, but if you can't pick it up it can't be cracked."
Zimmerman also believes that, unlike infrared or Bluetooth phones and
PDAs, which enable people to "beam" electronic business cards across a
room without ever formally meeting, body-based networking allows for
more natural interchanges of information between humans.
"If you are very close or touching someone, you are either in a busy
subway train, or you are being intimate with them, or you want to
communicate," he says. "I think it is good to be close to someone when
you are exchanging information."
RedTacton transceivers can be treated as standard network devices, so
software running over Ethernet or other TCP/IP protocol-based networks
will run unmodified.
Gordon Bell, a senior researcher at Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center
in San Francisco, says that while Bluetooth or other radio technologies
may be perfectly suitable to link gadgets for many personal area
networking purposes, there are certain applications for which RedTacton
technology would be ideal.
"I recently acquired my own in-body device -- a pacemaker -- but it
takes a special radio frequency connector to interface to it. As more
and more implants go into bodies, the need for a good Internet Protocol
connection increases," he says.
In the near future, the most important application for body-based
networking may well be for communications within, rather than on the
surface of, or outside, the body.
An intriguing possibility is that the technology will be used as a sort
of secondary nervous system to link large numbers of tiny implanted
components placed beneath the skin to create powerful onboard -- or
in-body -- computers.
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