RED TACTON- AN INNOVATIVE HUMAN AREA NETWORKING TECHNOLOGY

        

 

RED TACTON- AN INNOVATIVE HUMAN AREA NETWORKING TECHNOLOGY

B.OBULIRAJ

B.E CSE

  ABSTRACT

                

             Red Tacton is a human area networking technology that uses the surface of the human body as a safe high speed network transmission path. The technology is called TACTON because this influences communication, that starts by touching (Touch) leading to various actions (ACTON).RED is used to convey the meaning of warmth in communication.

            Red Tacton takes a different technical approach. Instead of relying on electromagnetic waves or light waves to carry data, a Red Tacton transmitter couples with extremely weak electric fields pass through the body to a Red Tacton receiver, where the weak electric field affects the optical properties of an electro-optic crystal, physically separating ends the contact and thus closes the communication . Communication is possible using any body surfaces  such as hands, fingers, arms, feet, face, legs or torso.

            The Red Tacton chips will be embedded in machines and contain a transmitter and receiver built to see and accept any form of data stored in  a digital format. The chip then takes any type of file -----such as MP3 music file or e-mail----and converts it into digital pulses that can be passed and read through a human being’s electric field. The chip in the receiving device reads these reads these tiny changes and converts the file back into it’s original form.           

         

             

INTRODUCTION:

                  Today people can communicate anytime, anywhere, and with anyone over a

cellular phone network. Moreover, the Internet lets people download immense quantities of data from remotely located servers to their home computers. Essentially, these two technologies enable communications between terminals located at a distance from each other. Meanwhile, all kinds of electronic devices including personal digital assistants (PDAs), pocket video games, and digital cameras are becoming smaller, so people can carry around or even wear various personal information and communication appliances during their everyday activities. However, user-friendly ubiquitous services involve more than just networking between remotely located terminals. Communication between electronic devices on the human body (wearable computers) and ones embedded in our everyday environments such as illustrated in Fig. 1 is also critical, so this has driven extensive research and development on human area networks.

                        Wired connections between electronic devices in human area networks are cumbersome and can easily become entangled. Short-range wireless communication systems such as Bluetooth and wireless local area networks (IEEE 802.11b, etc.) have some problems. Throughput is reduced by packet collisions in crowded spaces such as meeting rooms and auditoriums filled with people and communication is not secure because signals can be intercepted. The principle drawback of infrared communications (IrDA) is the tight directionality of beams between terminals needed for the system to be effective.

                      The ultimate human area network solution to all these constraints of conventional technologies is “intrabody” communication, in which the human body serves as the transmission medium. In ubiquitous services (which imply communication between electronic devices embedded in the environment in close proximity to people), if we could use the human body itself as a transmission medium, then this would be an ideal way of implementing human area networks because it would solve at a stroke all the problems including throughput reduction, low security, and high network setup costs. The concept of intrabody communication, which uses the minute electric field propagated by the human body to transmit information, was first proposed by IBM. The communication mechanism has subsequently been evaluated and reported by several research groups around the world. However, all  those reported technologies had two limitations:

                   

1) The operating range through the body was limited to a few tens of centimeters and

2) The top communication speed was only 40 kbit/s.

                 These limitations arise from the use of an electrical sensor for the receiver. An electrical sensor requires two lines (a signal line and a ground line), whereas in intrabody

communication there is essentially only one signal line, i.e., the body itself, which leads to an unbalanced transmission line, so the signal is not transmitted correctly.

HOW REDTACTON WORKS:

            Using a new super-sensitive photonic electric field sensor, Red Tacton can achieve duplex communication over human body at a maximum speed of 10 Mbps.

1. The Red Tacton transmitter induces a weak electric field on the surface of the body.
2. The Red Tacton receiver senses changes in the weak electric field on the surface of the body caused by the transmitter.
3. Red Tacton relies upon the principle that the optical properties of an electro-optic crystal can vary according to the changes of a weak electric field.
4. Red Tacton detects changes in the optical properties of an electro-optic crystal using a laser and coverts the result to an electrical signal in a optical receiver circuit.

             The operating principle of RedTacton is illustrated in Fig. 2. The electric field induced toward the body by the transmitter’s signal electrode is represented by Ea. The system requires a ground close to the transmitter signal electrode, so electric field Eb induced from the body can follow a return path to the transmitter ground. Moreover, since people are usually standing on a floor or the ground, electric field Ec escapes from the body to ground, mainly from the feet. The electric field Es that reaches the receiver is Es = Ea – (Eb + Ec). It couples to the electro-optic crystal and changes the crystal’s optical properties. This change is detected by laser light and transformed into digital data

by a detector circuit.

                                    

                                  

REDTACTON TRANSCEIVER:

                                  

                     Figure 3 shows a photograph of the RedTacton transceiver connected to a PDA and a block diagram of the Red- Tacton transceiver developed by NTT. The transmitter consists of a transmitter circuit that induces electric fields toward the body and a data sense circuit, which distinguishes transmitting and receiving modes by detecting both transmission and reception data and outputs control signals corresponding to the two modes to enable two-way communication. We implemented a receive-first half-duplex communication scheme that sends only after checking to make sure that there is no data to receive in order to avoid packet collisions between terminals in compliance with the IEEE 802.3 protocol. The receiver consists of an electro-optic sensor and a detector circuit that amplifies the minute incoming signal from the electro optic sensor and converts it to electrical signal. We conducted a series of trials in which data was sent through human bodies using RedTacton transceivers.

                  The experimental setup for intrabody communication assuming communication between two electronic devices (PDAs) is shown in Fig. 4. We prepared two sets of RedTacton transceivers, each connected to a PDA. The subject held one transmitting/ receiving electrode in each hand. We quantitatively measured the bit error rates of signals sent through the body. The results showed that the system had no significant practical problems at a transmission speed of 10 Mbit/s. Besides communication between two hands, we also demonstrated reliable communication between a foot and finger and between other locations on the person’s body. We also verified that good communication was achieved not only when the electrodes were in direct contact with the person’s skin, but also when the signals passed through clothing and shoes.

                               

THREE FEATURES:

Touch:

Touching, gripping, sitting, walking, stepping and other human movements can be the triggers for unlocking or locking, starting or stopping equipment, or obtaining data

Broadband and Interactive:

            Duplex, interactive communication is possible at a maximum speed of 10Mbps. Because the transmission path is on the surface of the body, transmission speed does not deteriorate in congested areas where many people are communicating at the same time

Any Media:

            In addition to the human body, various conductors and dielectrics can be used as transmission media. Conductors and dielectrics may also be used in combination

Download files via flesh

            Red Tacton uses the human body as a path for the electric signals that are communicated to represent data. The transmitter worn on a body uses the body’s electrical field to transmit digital messages. For example, by shaking hands two people can exchange business cards. When a user touches a door handle, the system realizes who the person is and gives the authorization. By holding a camera in one hand and touching the printer with other the photographs can be printed. By touching a mobile phone the address book can be downloaded.

   APPLICATIONS:

           The applications are quite intuitive.

 Carrying a mobile Red Tacton capable device in one’s pocket ID is verified and the door unlocked when the user holds the door knob normally. Similarly secure lock administration is possible by combining personal verification tools such as finger print ID or biometric in the mobile terminal.

  In human body, it is used to detect ailments such as abnormal growths, tumors, and excrescences affected tissues and thus helps in allowing providing a cure.

Red Tacton allows communication in outer space and in water where the speech constraints are very high and thus enables a highly efficient means of expression of speech which is beyond the purvey of human beings.

CONCLUSION:

                   Red Tacton is an exciting new technology for human area networking. We have developed a transceiver that uses the human body as a data transmission medium based on an electric-field sensor that uses an electro-optic crystal and laser light. Using this transceiver, we succeeded in achieving 10BASE communication in accordance with IEEE 802.3 through a human body from one hand to the other hand. While our immediate objective is to implement a Red Tacton system supporting two-way intrabody communication at a rate of 10 Mbit/s between any two points on the body, our longer-term plans include developing a mass-market transceiver interface supporting PDAs and notebook computers while continuing efforts to reduce the size and power consumption of the transceiver to enhance its portability. NTT is committed to using its comprehensive commercialization functions to push this research out to the marketplace as quickly as possible while moving ahead with tests and trials in collaboration with commercial partners as necessary.

REFERENCES:

[1] T. G. Zimmerman, “Personal Area Networks: Near-field intrabody communication,”      IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 35, Nos. 3&4, pp. 609- 617, 1996.[2] T. Nagatsuma and M. Shinagawa, “Photonic measurement technologies for high-frequency electronics,” NTT REVIEW, Vol. 14, No. 6, pp. 12-24, 2002.