SocialHBC: Social Networking and Secure Authentication using Interference-Robust Human Body Communication

Abstract

With the advent of cheap computing through five decades of continued miniaturization following Moores Law, wearable devices are becoming increasingly popular. These wearable devices are typically interconnected using wireless body area network (WBAN). Human body communication (HBC) provides an alternate energy-efficient communication technique between on-body wearable devices by using the human body as a conducting medium. This allows order of magnitude lower communication power, compared to WBAN, due to lower loss and broadband signaling. Moreover, HBC is significantly more secure than WBAN, as the information is contained within the human body and cannot be snooped on unless the person is physically touched. In this paper, we highlight applications of HBC as (1) Social Networking (e.g. LinkedIn/Facebook friend request sent during Handshaking in a meeting/party), (2) Secure Authentication using human-human or human-machine dynamic HBC and (3) ultra-low power, secure BAN using intra-human HBC. One of the biggest technical bottlenecks of HBC has been the interference (e.g. FM) picked up by the human body acting like an antenna. In this work, for the first time, we introduce an integrating dual data rate (DDR) receiver technique, that allows notch filtering (>20 dB) of the interference for interference-robust HBC.