Propagation Characteristics of Human Body Communication in Brain-Controlled Functional Electrical Stimulation

Human body communication (HBC), which uses the human body as a propagation medium, is a promising communication technology in brain-controlled functional electrical stimulation (FES). In order to study the propagation characteristics of HBC channel between intra-brain and body implant, a 45kg pig was employed as an experimental subject in this paper. The channel characteristics of amplitude and group delay were investigated by vector network analyzer (VNA) over different frequencies (from 0.3MHz to 200MHz). A battery powered transmitter and receiver were adopted to study the influence of electrode size and type. Experimental results show that the optimal HBC frequency for brain-controlled FES applications is from 5MHz to 50MHz. Electrode size have little impact on signal transmission in body channel. In addition, signal transmission is insensitive with the electrode type.