Members of the public could form the backbone of powerful new
mobile networks by carrying wearable sensors. According to
researchers from Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland,
the novel sensors could create new ultra high bandwidth mobile
internet infrastructures and reduce the density of mobile phone
base stations. The engineers from Queen’s Institute of
Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT),
are working on a new project based on the rapidly developing
science of body centric communications. The researchers at ECIT
are investigating how small sensors carried by members of the
public, in items such as next-generation smartphones, could
communicate with each other to create potentially vast body-to-
body networks (BBNs). The new sensors would interact to transmit
data, providing ‘anytime, anywhere’ mobile network connectivity.
Simon Cotton, an ECIT wireless communications research fellow,
said: “In the past few years, a significant amount of research
has been undertaken into an