Kommunikation genom att använda människokroppen som  överföringsmedium, med kapacitiv koppling mellan hud och sensor, har varit ett pågående forskningsområde för PAN (Personal Area Network) sedan Thomas Guthrie Zimmerman introducerade tekniken 1995. Anledningen till detta är att undersöka fördelar och användningsområden för en kommunikationsmetod som ej sänder ut RF-signaler och därmed minska risken för obehörig avlyssning. Denna rapport beskriver ett examensarbete som undersöker möjligheten till eliminering av USB- till UART-konverterare på Microchip BodyCom genom mjukvaru-USB-stack och kombinera denna med Body Coupled Communication funktionalitet i en gemensam mikrokontroller. Vidare studeras om programkoden i Body Coupled Communication sändare kan modifieras för att utöka funktionaliteten. Det var givet i förutsättningarna att mikrokontroller från Microchip skulle användas, vidare var lågt pris respektive låg strömförbrukning viktigt, särskilt för sändaren. Metoden för att uppnå detta har varit användning av Microchip BodyCom development kit tillsammans med Microchip USB low pin count development kit och Microchip USB firmwareframework. Resultatet blev att USB- till UART-omvandlare kunde integreras med Microchip BodyCom genom att använda mjukvaru-USB-stack och en modifierad programkod för BodyCom i en gemensam mikrokontroller. Endast fantasin sätter gränsen för vad Body Coupled Communication kan användas till. Det skulle t.ex. vara möjligt att utbyta elektroniska visitkort genom en handskakning eller öppna en låst dörr endast genom att ta i handtaget. / Communication using the human body as a transmission medium, the capacitive coupling between the skin and sensor, has been an active research area for PAN (Personal Area Network) since Thomas Guthrie Zimmerman introduced the technique in 1995. The reason for this is to examine the benefits and uses of a communication method that does not emit RF signals and thus reduce the risk of unauthorized interception. This report describes a thesis that examines the possibility of elimination of USB to UART converter on Microchip BodyCom through software USB-stack and combine this with Body Coupled Communication functionality in a single microcontroller. Furthermore, studies on if the application code in Body Coupled Communication transmitters can be modified to extend functionality. It was given in the conditions that microcontrollers from Microchip should be used, furthermore, low price and low power consumption were important, especially for the transmitter. The method for achieving this has been the use of Microchip BodyCom development kit with USB Microchip low pin count development kit and Microchip USB firmware framework. The result was that the USB- to UART-converter could be integrated with Microchip BodyCom, using software USB-stack and a modified program code for BodyCom in a single microcontroller. Only your imagination sets the limits for Body Coupled Communication can be used for. For example, it would be possible to exchange electronic business cards by a handshake or open a locked door only by using the handle.

The main concept of Body-Coupled Communication (BCC) is to transmit the electrical information through the human body as a communication medium by means of capacitive coupling. Nowadays the current research of wireless body area network are expanding more with the new ideas and topologies for better result in respect to the low power and area, security, reliability and sensitivity since it is first introduced by the Zimmerman in 1995. In contrast with the other existing wireless communication technology such as WiFi, Bluetooth and Zigbee, the BCC is going to increase the number of applications as well as solves the problem with the cell based communication system depending upon the frequency allocation. In addition, this promising technology has been standardized by a task group named IEEE 802.15.6 addressing a reliable and feasible system for low power in-body and on-body nodes that serves a variety of medical and non medical applications. The entire BAN project is divided into three major parts consisting of application layer, digital baseband and analog front end (AFE) transceiver. In the thesis work a strong driver circuit for BCC is implemented as an analog front end transmitter (Tx). The primary purpose of the study is to transmit a strong signal as the signal is attenuated by the body around 60 dB. The Driver circuit is cascaded of two single-stage inverter and an identical inverter with drain resistor. The entire driver circuit is designed with ST65 nm CMOS technology with 1.2 V supply operated at 10 MHz frequency, has a driving capability of 6 mA which is the basic requirement. The performance of the transmitter is compared with the other architecture by integrating different analysis such as corner analysis, noise analysis and eye diagram. The cycle to cycle jitter is 0.87% which is well below to the maximum point and the power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) is 65 dB indicates the good emission of supply noise. In addition, the transmitter does not require a filter to emit the noise because the body acts like a low pass filter. In conclusion the findings of the thesis work is quite healthy compared to the previous work. Finally, there is some point to improve for the driver circuit in respect to the power consumption, propagation delay and leakage power in the future.

Body coupled communication (BCC) is a hot topic in personal networking domain. Many works arepublished suggesting different architectures for BCC since its inception in 1995 by Zimmerman. The number ofelectronic gadgets used by a single person increases as time pass by. Its a tedious job to transfer data betweenthen from a user point of view. Many of these gadgets can share their resources and save power and money.The existing wired or wireless networks does not meet the requirements for this network like scalable data rate,security etc. So here comes the novel idea of using human body as communication medium. The aim of thisthesis is to realize a hardware for BCC based on wide band signaling as part of a big project.The human body consists of 70% of water. This property makes the human body a fairly good conductor.By exploiting this basic property makes the BCC possible. A capacitance is formed if we place a metal platenear to the human body with the skin as a dielectric. This capacitance forms the interface between the humanbody and the analog front-end of the BCC transceiver. Any other metal structures near to the human body canattenuate the signal.A first-order communication link is established in software by the human body model and the transceiver inthe loop along with noise and interference. This communication link is used to verify the human body modeland the base band model done as part of the same big project. Based on the results a hardware prototype isimplemented. Measurements are taken in different scenarios using the hardware setup. The trade-off betweendesign parameters are discussed based on the results. At the end, it suggests a road map to take the projectfurther.

A wireless body network with sensors and actuators is a topical subject in current situation, because the healthcare services cannot meet peoples requirements for personal health-care. Such a network can be used to monitor the health status of e.g. elderly people and provide a drug delivery without external human interaction. In this project we will implement a prototype of a distributed system of sensors and actuator using the human body as a transmission line for communication purposes (Capacitive Body-coupled Communication), as a solution for the problem. Similar systems have been implemented earlier, using radio-based wireless communication which consumes more power and have critical security issues, compared to capacitive body-coupled communication. This document describes how the system is implemented with focus on robust gathering of sensor data from several sensors from a single node using capacitive body-coupled communication and an actuator control with user interaction.