Body-Coupled Power Transceiver with Node-Specific Body-Area Powering

Body-coupled powering (BCP) via the human body channel has demonstrated improved pathloss and body-area coverage over conventional approaches. This work focuses on dynamic optimization of the transmitter (hub-side) output power and frequency, to avoid power overdraw for prolonged transmitter (hub) lifetime. Power evaluation and feedback allow for the transmitter to dynamically adapt its power and frequency, based on the node-specific channel and power condition, with only ~90nW overhead. This saves the overall TX power by 7×. Moreover, HV driver with simplified driving circuits is proposed in standard CMOS process, which allows for 20× improved power delivery (at 105cm) while saving 23% of the TX power consumption. The 40nm CMOS body-coupled power transceiver (TRX) ICs delivers up to 1.1mW and 22µW power to the receiver located at 20cm and 105cm away on the body.