The Role and Challenges of Body Channel Communication in Wearable Flexible Electronics

Flexible electronics are compatible with film substrates that are soft and stretchable, resulting in conformal integration with human body. Integrated with various sensors and communication ICs, wearable flexible electronics are able to effectively track human vital signs without affecting the body activities. Such a wearable flexible system contains a sensor, a front-end amplifier (FEA), an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), a micro-controller unit (MCU), a radio, a power management unit (PMU), where the radio is the design bottleneck due to its high power consumption. Different from conventional wireless communications, body channel communication (BCC) uses the human body surface as the signal transmission medium resulting in less signal loss and low power consumption. However, there are some design challenges in BCC, including body channel model, backward loss, variable contact impedance, stringent spectral mask, crystalless design, body antenna effect, etc. In this paper, we conduct a survey on BCC transceiver, and analyze its potential role and challenges in wearable flexible electronics.