A survey on energy efficiency intrabody communication techniques for wearable devices

Abstract

Currently, wireless body area networks (WBANs) are developing rapidly. Miniature wearable devices which are light weight and low power consumption can be developed using modern technology. However, the WBANs research challenge is power consumption. This paper provides the two intrabody communication (IBC) methods review. The equivalent body channel models and modeling methods are analyzed. The conventional IBC WBANs architecture is reviewed and novel energy-efficient architecture and an IBC WBANs data transmission technique are proposed. The experiment was conducted in order to measure the BodyCom mobile module output power. The comparative analysis showed that the power consumption of the IBC proposed technique is 7 times lower than Bluetooth LE, and 14 times lower than ZigBee. The proposed technique can be applied in areas such as home and industrial automation, medical appliances, wearable devices, security, and internet of things.