Future applications of body area communications

Ubiquitous communication seems to be in practical use these days. However we are still looking for a new promising communication infrastructure for personal area network. In this paper, we show some of the body area communication characteristics and applications for the future personal area application. We have investigated both of the intra-body communication and inter-body communication in terms of propagation and application respectively. Various kinds of wearable devices have been developed for many purposes. Some of the medical applications require very small size of the transmission device in order to have enough portability and long life time. Body area communication seems to give us the answer such requirement.