A W-LAN using your skin?

Yeah! It's Friday again. No outing today, but I'm glad enough the week is over, although I'm not exactly looking forward to next week. I think I'll be quite busy over the weekend too, cos I still have to finish up my IA report. My first draft is out, but I can't say I'm pleased with it, seems kinda incoherent at times. But, I submitted it to my supervisor for a 1st draft vetting, just in case I've accidentally leaked out some secrets without knowing. In any case, I guess I'll still have to lug my laptop home later, which isn't exactly that light.

Now if you are like me, and wish you had a way to carry a computer around without actually carrying a laptop, personal computing devices might be the key. The problem now is that not many of such devices are cheap, and the number of wires required to connect them up makes them cumbersome. However, if the technology in today's article comes true, we may be seeing the last of wires on any personal device. There's even the possibility of being able to exchange information in your personal computing device just by shaking hands with another person.

Unbelievable? Well, its true. NTT Labs, the research and development wing of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, has developed a system called RedTactont "that uses the naturally-occurring electrical fields of human skin to transmit data" and are planning to conduct field trials soon. Essentially, what this technology does is make the skin a sort of Wireless Local Area Network (W-LAN) for personal devices. How fast is it? Well, its a whopping 10 Mega bits per second (Mbps). Considering that your average office wireless network is running on a 802.11b 11 Mbps connection, a 1 Mbps slower connection doesn't seem that bad now does it?

The system works by using ultra sensitive Electro-Optic sensors to measure changes in the human body's natural electric field, converting them into electrical signals. This technology is safe because "no current flows into the body" and is surprisingly reliable as the signal is "invulnerable to rain, cold, heat, static electricity, or electrical storms". However, it is affected sometimes by electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency.

At present, all the user needs to do is to place a small transceiver into a pocket. The transceiver can then communictate with other transceivers on the body, "for example, mediating transmission between an MP3 player and a headset". Scientists say that they will soon shrink the size of the device so that it can fit on a handphone or PDA.

What's even more amazing about this technology is that it is not only limited to communications within one body, but capable of transmission outside, through conductors. This means other potential uses for such technology like sharing of information just by touching a PC or another person, opening a locked door just by touching the door knob, and even communicating with multiple users at once, apparently without losing bandwidth, which "if true, the group hug could turn into a productivity tool as well as a motivational technique".

However, this technology will have a number of obstacles. The first being the obvious threat of competing short ranged wireless technology. The most major competitor at present is the famous Bluetooth technology, which is currently already in use and proven to work well in a multitude of electronic devices. This is a big challenge for an upcoming and unproven technology like RedTactont. Another barrier is the psychological one. As the long term effects of the technology on the human body is still not known, no one is actually sure that its really as safe as its supposed to be. Even if convinced of the device's safety, some people might worry about privacy or theft from accidental physical contact. However, researchers claim that it with proper security measures, this will not be a problem.

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm certainly looking forward to this technology, if only just to be able to listen to my radio/mp3 without the challenge of untangling troublesome bundle of wire that's supposed to be the ear pieces.

This month, NTT Labs, the research and development wing of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, plans to start conducting field trials for a radical new "human area networking" technology called RedTactont that uses the naturally-occurring electrical fields of human skin to transmit data.

The slim, PCMCIA-based RedTacton transceiver combines a an optical receiver circuit equipped with a super-sensitive photonic electrical field sensor and a crystal to transmit data over the surface of human body at up to 10 megabits per second between wearable devices.

Linked only by touch, the transceivers can also connect to similar transceivers worn by other users or embedded in any objects in real space, such as turnstiles or consumer electronics. Promising better security and far less interference than short-range wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, ZigBee and Near-Field Communications, RedTacton will likely be targeted for use in applications such as wireless headphones, wearable medical devices, security applications, and point-of-sale interactions.

Click here for the full article.