Fibroblasts cell number density based human skin characterization at THz for in-body nanonetworks

Abstract

This paper presents the investigation of the electromagnetic properties of human skin tissues using Terahertz Time Domain Spectroscopy (THz-TDS). The material parameters i.e., refractive index and absorption coefficient are extracted for artificially synthesized skin cultured using fibroblast cells and collagen type I reagent. The increase in cell count number by 200% causes a distinctive decrease in refractive index and absorption coefficient values. In addition to material parameters, in-body channel parameters i.e., total pathloss and molecular noise temperature of the skin are also calculated. The results show the dependency of channel parameters on molecular features and hydration level of the skin. Such findings will pave the way for more rigorous THz channel analysis and network modeling to be applied for body-centric nano-communication specifically in the bioengineering domain.