Bodylink sends data through skin and tissue instead of through the air. One chip, no antenna, no crowded 2.4 GHz band — just sensors on a body that talk to each other.
Radio pushes energy into the air and hopes some of it lands on an antenna. Human body communication does something simpler: it uses the body itself as the conductor. A small electrode couples a low-power signal into the skin, the signal spreads through the tissue, and a second electrode somewhere else on the same body reads it back.
A transmitter electrode sits against the skin — no antenna, no impedance matching, no tuning to get right.
The signal follows the body. It bends around limbs, passes through clothing contact, and stays with the person as they move.
A receiver electrode elsewhere on the body picks the signal up and the on-chip receiver recovers the data, checked for errors.
BLE and Zigbee are excellent at what they were designed for: sending data across a room. On a body they are working against physics. Tissue absorbs 2.4 GHz, so a chest sensor talking to an ankle sensor has to radiate around the person, through a band already shared with Wi-Fi, phones and every other device nearby.
| Bodylink | Bluetooth LE | Zigbee | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the signal goes | Through the body | Through the air, 2.4 GHz | Through the air, 2.4 GHz |
| Antenna | None — two electrode pads | Required, plus matching and keepout | Required, plus matching and keepout |
| Body in the way | The body is the path, not the obstacle | Tissue absorbs the signal; links drop as the wearer moves | Same absorption problem |
| Who can hear it | Stays close to the wearer, so eavesdropping means touching them | Reaches metres past the wearer | Reaches across a building through a mesh |
| Band congestion | Away from the 2.4 GHz crowd | Shares the band with Wi-Fi and everything else | Shares the same band |
| Pairing | Contact is the pairing — touch a device and the link exists | Scan, pair, bond, manage keys | Network join and commissioning |
| Best at | Sensors on one person talking to each other | A device talking to a phone | Fixed nodes across a room or a plant |
HBC is not a replacement for BLE — most products use both. Bodylink carries the on-body traffic; a single gateway node forwards a summary to the phone.
A complete on-body node on one piece of silicon. Transceiver, processor, sensing front end and interfaces, fabricated in TSMC 65 nm and tested on real hardware — not a simulation.
Custom silicon usually means months of toolchain work before the first line of product code. Bodylink ships with its own IDE: open it, write plain C against a documented library, press upload. The compiler, linker and programmer are already set up and matched to the chip.
Editor and examplesOne-click buildUpload over serialSerial monitorBrowsable function reference
Ask for a demo// Read the IMU and send it across the body void setup() { hbc_begin(); i2c_begin(); imu_begin(BMI160); } void loop() { int16_t x, y, z; imu_read(&x, &y, &z); hbc_send(x); // through the body delay(100); }
The same chip on a small wearable board, in a transmit node and a receiver node, so you can have a working on-body link on a real person in an afternoon.
Each node carries the sensors most on-body products need — motion, ECG-class biopotential and temperature — wired to the chip and covered by the library. Add your own parts on the I²C and SPI headers.
Motion sensingBiopotential / ECGTemperatureCoin-cell powerSnap electrodesExpansion header
Ask about evaluation kitsAnywhere several devices live on one person and shouldn't be shouting across the room to reach each other.
Patches on the chest, wrist and ankle share one link that follows the patient through the ward, without adding to hospital radio traffic.
Muscle sensors, controllers and actuators on the same limb coordinate over the body instead of a harness of wires.
A worn credential releases its key only through skin contact, so access happens when someone touches the handle — and only then.
Motion, temperature and heart data from several body positions merge into one node before anything is sent off the body.
Characterise the body channel with a chip that exposes its transmitter, receiver and clock as separate observable modes.
A short body link carries data from a hard-to-reach device to an accessible one without pushing power through tissue as radio.
Take the part, take the boards, or bring us a product and we'll take it to silicon.
Bare die or packaged parts, with the datasheet, library and IDE. Sample quantities available for evaluation, volume pricing on request.
Sensor boards with the chip, an IMU, biopotential and temperature sensing, electrodes and battery. Reference schematics included.
Body-channel link studies, firmware, board design around the chip, and mixed-signal ASIC work if your product needs its own part.
Send a few lines about the application and we'll come back with a quote, a datasheet, or a call with the engineer who taped this chip out.
We read every enquiry ourselves and usually reply within two working days.