A Different Kind of Wireless: Human Body Communication

A Japanese ham radio operator studies a type of communication we don’t normally associate with “wireless” — communication through the human body, or HBC. Contributing Editor PT2ZDX/LU9EFO sat down (online) with JE1BQE to get a better understanding.

Hideyuki Nebiya, JE1BQE, is an expert in wireless communications, a professor at the Graduate School of Science and Technology at Nihon University, and founder of the Amplet Communications Research Laboratory in Japan. He has developed an important area of scientific research based on “human body communication” (HBC), in which the body itself is used as a means to transmit signals.

Using the body to communicate through speech, expressions, or gestures is something that humans have been doing since the beginning of our existence. But what is “human body communication” all about? To address this issue, I