SBIR Phase I: Physically Secure Wearable Key using Electro-Quasistatic Human Body Communication

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是实现低能耗、低功耗、物理安全的身体区域网络(BAN)开放应用和使用案例。BANS是可穿戴计算设备的无线网络。典型的BAN设备作为植入物嵌入体内，表面安装在身体的固定位置，或结合到人类携带的配套设备中。今天的标准BAN技术依赖于电磁波进行BAN通信，这在物理上并不安全，而且与BAN节点中的传感和计算相比，消耗的功率要高出数量级，这使得通信链路成为超低功耗BAN设备的能源瓶颈。该项目将带来一种全新的设备类别，这些设备使用人体作为“电线”，实现比目前人体周围通信的功率低几个数量级，同时使用电子准静态人体通信技术实现物理安全。这项技术将使无电池BAN操作成为可能，并使远程生理健康监测、运动员成绩监测、安全门禁、神经监测，以及未来可能的脑机接口等应用成为可能。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目旨在通过利用人体作为安全通信媒介来设计一款演示可穿戴手环。该频段利用电子准静态人体通信(EQS-HBC)来演示身体周围设备之间的无缝通信，信号泄漏主要包含在身体内。预计车身导线原型将通过将能耗降低100倍来解决电池寿命延长的问题，从而实现更持久、更智能、更小(新外形)的设备。能量的减少和改进的物理安全性(除了加密之外)可能为许多具有新的外形因素(例如，连接的补丁)的新传感器节点打开可能性。关于人体姿势、周围环境、人与人之间的差异对整体特征的影响以及人体作为通信渠道的安全性的研究，将从电路设计的角度理解必要的设计规范，并使无电池、生理传感器节点等应用实用化。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to enable low energy, low power, physically secure Body Area Network (BAN) opening applications and use cases. BANs are wireless networks of wearable computing devices. Typical BAN devices are embedded inside the body as implants, surface-mounted on the body in a fixed position, or incorporated into accompanying devices which humans carry. Today's standard BAN technologies rely on electromagnetic waves for BAN communication, which is not physically secure and consume orders of magnitude more power compared to sensing and computation in a BAN node, making the communication link the energy bottleneck for ultra-low-power BAN devices. This project will lead to a fundamentally new class of devices that use the human body as a "wire" to achieve orders of magnitude lower power than today’s communication around the human body while simultaneously being physically secure using Electro Quasi-Static Human Body Communication technology. This technology will make battery-less BAN operation possible and enable applications like remote physiological health monitoring, athlete performance monitoring, secure access control, neural monitoring, and possibly brain-machine interfaces in the future. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to design a demo wearable band by utilizing the human body as a secure communication medium. The band utilizes Electro-Quasi-Static-Human Body Communication (EQS-HBC) to demonstrate seamless communication between devices around the body with signal leakage primarily contained within the body. The body-wire prototype is expected to solve the problem of increased battery life by achieving a 100x reduction in energy, allowing longer-lasting, smarter, smaller (new form-factors) devices. The energy reduction and improved physical security (in addition to encryption) may open possibilities for many new sensor nodes with new form factors (e.g., connected patch). The studies about the effect of human body postures, surrounding environment, inter-human variation on the overall characteristics, and security of the human body as a communication channel will provide an understanding of the necessary design specifications from a circuit design perspective and make applications like battery-less, physiological sensor nodes practical.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.