Multi-Carrier FM Transmitter for Distributed Vibrators on Conductive Textile

This paper addresses issues in realizing a whole-body tactile display system. Individual wiring for each actuator requires many wires and presents a dilemma of durability and flexibility. Wireless transmission can eliminate these wires; however, practical wireless power supply to drive actuators is not currently available. Two-dimensional (2-D) communications on conductive textiles enable DC supply and data transfer while suppressing interference with other radio communications. Previously, a concept of multi-carrier frequency modulation (FM)-based vibrotactile waveform transmission on conductive textiles has been presented. However, practical implementations, in particular how to implement realtime multi-carrier FM, have not been clarified. In this paper, we propose a software-defined radio (SDR)-based multi-carrier FM transmitter capable of transmitting non-preprogrammed arbitrary waveforms of vibrotactile sensation.