Abstract
This paper presents the first characterization and modeling of dynamic propagation channels for human body communication (HBC). In-situ experiments were performed using customized transceivers in an anechoic chamber. Three HBC propagation channels, i.e., from right leg to left leg, from right hand to left hand and from right hand to left leg, were investigated under thirty-three motion scenarios. Snapshots of data (2,800,000) were acquired from five volunteers. Various path gains caused by different locations and movements were quantified and the statistical distributions were estimated. In general, for a given reference threshold è = −10 dB, the maximum average level crossing rate of the HBC was approximately 1.99 Hz, the maximum average fade time was 59.4 ms, and the percentage of bad channel duration time was less than 4.16%. The HBC exhibited a fade depth of −4 dB at 90% complementary cumulative probability. The statistical parameters were observed to be centered for each propagation channel. Subsequently a Fritchman model was implemented to estimate the burst characteristics of the on-body fading. It was concluded that the HBC is motion-insensitive, which is sufficient for reliable communication link during motions, and therefore it has great potential for body sensor/area networks.
Highlights
With the rapid development of biosensor and wireless communication technologies, body sensor networks (BSN) and body area networks (BAN) are becoming more widely used for healthcare and pervasive applications [1,2]
In human body communication (HBC), the forward signal path was primarily coupled through the human body, whereas the signal return path was coupled with the ambient environment [18,45]
The Rayleigh distribution performed poorly in all configurations. It suggested that HBC has a dominant component representing the signal coupling with the body and the ambient environment; movement has no significant influence on the propagation channel
Summary
With the rapid development of biosensor and wireless communication technologies, body sensor networks (BSN) and body area networks (BAN) are becoming more widely used for healthcare and pervasive applications [1,2]. Because of the aforementioned merits, the HBC has already been employed in business card [7], touch and play [12] and advertising [13] applications To transmit differential current signals [15,16,17] This solution is impractical for BSN/BAN applications whilst the form factor of the complete body-worn devices is extremely miniaturized. Fritchman model was presented to describe the burst features, which are the primary characteristics of dynamic changes of the fading channel in human body communication
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