Mobile computing with personal area network and human power generation

Abstract

For mobile computing system such as wearable computer, one of the most critical hardware issues is the provision of electric power. Various different sources of power for wearable computer have been investigated; however, we are interested only in power that can be generated in-situ, such as human power. This paper describes a novel mean of multiple source human power generation for small wearable electronic devices, and then demonstrates the digital information transfer between wearable computing devices by using human skin as "antenna". There are a wide range of peripheral devices in a mobile computing system, such as sensors and identification memory tags. As the amount of such devices increases in a mobile computing design, there is a need for these devices to communicate efficiently with the central processing unit. Also, it is highly desirable that these devices could be conveniently connected to the wearable computer without many dangling wires. We developed a personal area network (PAN) system which attempts to interconnect such devices, and at the same time uses human body as communication channel. This system is in a way novel because it is totally powered by human motion. © World Scientific Publishing Company.