Effect of human movement on the body coupled communications channel in body area networks

Abstract

Body Coupled Communication (BCC) systems use the human body as the medium through which a signal is transmitted to connect devices placed in, on or in close proximity to the human body. To enable good BCC system design, the BCC channel has to be very well understood. This study focuses on understanding the effect of human body movement on the BCC channel. First some experiments were carried out to measure how the signal properties vary as a person moves. Two types of movements were investigated; sideways arm movement and marching on the spot. After that, the results obtained were used to derive a model for the behaviour of the BCC channel under moving body conditions. It was found that different body movements result in significantly different BCC channel behaviour. The type and speed of movement was found to affect the channel properties. It was found that the sideways arm movement is accurately modelled by a Log-normal distribution whilst the marching-on-the-spot movement is modelled by a Generalized Extreme Value distribution.