Enhancement of intra-body propagation and communication under the Brillouin precursor perspective

Abstract

The emergence of the Brillouin precursor is presented as a plausible form to understand classical phenomena observed in intra-body propagation and through-tissue imaging technologies that can be associated with the features of these precursors formation, such as the non-exponentially level decay and the broadening of pulse duration. The authors describe the evolution of different pulses through skin, muscle as well as normal and malignant breast tissues by using both a time-domain and a frequency-domain analysis technique and multi-pole Debye models to characterise the dielectric properties of the considered tissues, in a frequency band designated by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) for ultra wideband medical applications, 0.5–20 GHz. The Cole–Cole model is also tested for the same frequency range and tissues in order to determine the influence of the dielectric model. The authors tested the influence of one of the main parameters considered critical for precursor emergence: the input pulse configuration. The results reveal that the precursor is a phenomenon to take into account for application in areas where larger signal-to-noise ratios can be of interest.