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A researcher wears devices that allow for the exchange of information using the body to communicate instead of sending a signal through the airwaves that could be hacked.
Photo courtesy of Purdue University
Researchers at Purdue University are developing technology that uses the body as a communication network. They say this is a more secure way to link devices.
If you currently have multiple wearable or even implantable smart devices that are linked, the wireless signal has to leave the body and then go back into it to transmit.
Purdue Engineering Professor Shreyas Sen has developed technology to use the body instead.
“It can provide a low loss, broadband channel which is a very secure and energy efficient way of connecting all the devices on the body,” Sen says.
Sen says the tissue layers are very conductive and the body is more efficient.
“It can be picked back up at the surface of any other location of the body or anywhere inside your body like a through an implantable pacemaker or something else,” says Sen.
The researchers have also demonstrated for the first time technology that connects one person’s device to another’s through touch. Sen says this is the future.
“We can utilize this to transmit a business card from my smart watch to your smart watch,” he says.
The technology has several pending patent applications in.
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