Will the next wireless infrastructure be humans wearing radios?

A team of Irish researchers are studying how humans can become the next wireless infrastructure, by wearing sensors, radios and gateways linked together in "body-to-body" networks.

With redesigned antennas, low-power radios, and new network protocols, potentially huge, constantly shifting body networks could create an "ultra-high-bandwidth mobile infrastructure." Such networks could offload even large file transfers from cellular networks, by making use of parallel transmission and routing through a mesh of body nodes. The body node can link to fixed access points, gateways, or cellular networks when needed. The work on "body-centric" communications has been a focus of the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology at Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. The researchers recently were awarded a grant of about $800,000 from the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Engineering and Physical Research Council.