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ElectAura-Net, a 10-Mbit/second Body Network
Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'Human Body Network Gets Fast,' Technology Research News tells us that NTT Docomo researchers in Japan have created a 10-Mbit/second indoor network by using human bodies as Ethernet cables. 'The network, dubbed ElectAura-Net, is wireless, but instead of using radio waves, infrared light, or microwaves to transmit information it uses a combination of the electric field that emanates from humans and a similar field emanating from special floor tiles.' ElectAura-Net is faster than the Bluetooth radio wave system and provides a solution for indoor networks. The researchers think that this is a solution for "ubiquitous" communication, using GPS outdoor and our bodies indoor. This summary contains more details."
I was thinking the same thing. I can't imagine that it would be good for you. Electricity and magnetism are interrelated; if you push one, the other bobbles.
Normally your body produces a magnetic field due to the small amount of electricity your nerves generate. If you start modulating that field externally, you ABSOLUTELY are going to have some kind of an effect on the current flows in the body.
It's possible the signal may be modulated at too high a rate for the nervous system to detect, but I personally wouldn't count on that, and don't plan to expose myself to such a network knowingly, now or ever.
We need to learn how to judge these systems. It takes years to develop and deploy a technology like this, and after you do, it would be very nice if it could be stretched for years to come. 10 MBaud might sound nice now, especially if its a real 10 MB unlike WiFi, but will it meet the need 5 years from now? At least some of the energies of the industry need to be focusing on how to get residential baud rates back onto a long term Moore's law-like development curve without killing us with new home or community infrastructure rollouts every few years.
A good wireless fit into the home network should aim itself to eliminating the mass of cables behind my entertainment center and making it possible to have many high fidelity video bandwidth devices that can be easily moved around without concern about the cost of fishing new cables. To match it to existing hardware, it probably should aim at IEEE 1394 per device speeds. If a small module were available to convert IEEE 1394 ports or USB 2 ports to the new backbone, many devices would be hostable on the home's network today. In order to host a large number of devices, preferably multiple security cameras, multiple LCDs or projectors, multiple speaker systems, etc, I suspect that this means that it should be a cellular network with a fiber backbone and cells that are room sized. It might actually be beneficial if the signal could not easily penetrate walls. The fiber backbone should use a type and quantity of fiber that we know can satisfy needs for about 20 years (approximately 11 Moore's generations) so that we can just upgrade the cells without fishing the walls again. The cell stations should be easily swappable, overpowered (for growth) modules. They should be placed so that if a future generation decided to use a spread spectrum light solution along with the RF for backwards compatibility, their placement would support it. The modules should be designed with the expectation of a 3 year lifetime before the owner would want to upgrade at least some of the rooms. Hopefully, with the range limited to rooms, the size and amount of power of the mobile side could be kept down.
Why would we need this kind of switched bandwidth? The only answer a geek should need is, if you build the infrastructure, the need will come. My personal desire would be to gradually turn my home into a lab that is ubiquitously connected so that I can start experimenting with using electronics as a means to bridge gaps, not just between man and computer, but between people and also to start using electronics to ease more of the mundane tasks of life and increase quality of life rather than for pure entertainment.
One aspect in particular that could have prevented the last several deaths/major disabilities in my family would be continuous medical monitoring and analysis. Detecting heart attacks and strokes at an early stage through continuous monitoring so that the benefits of existing treatments that must be administered in a timely fashion can be fully realized could save or preserve the quality of over a million lives a year in the US alone.
Yes, systems like that exist, but deployment is too selective and too expensive. If we build out the infrastructure and sensor networks as a multiuse system, the only part that has to come from the medical industry would be the software. And I suspect they couldn't keep the open source community out of that as long as it is served from countries that don't regulate equipment and software intended for medical use.