Abstract
The Internet of Bodies (IoBs) is an imminent extension to the vast Internet of Things domain, where interconnected devices (e.g., worn, implanted, embedded, swallowed, etc.) are located in-on-and-around the human body form a network. Thus, the IoB can enable a myriad of services and applications for a wide range of sectors, including medicine, safety, security, wellness, entertainment, to name but a few. Especially, considering the recent health and economic crisis caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic, also known as COVID-19, the IoB can revolutionize today’s public health and safety infrastructure. Nonetheless, reaping the full benefit of IoB is still subject to addressing related risks, concerns, and challenges. Hence, this survey first outlines the IoB requirements and related communication and networking standards. Considering the lossy and heterogeneous dielectric properties of the human body, one of the major technical challenges is characterizing the behavior of the communication links in-on-and-around the human body. Therefore, this article presents a systematic survey of channel modeling issues for various link types of human body communication (HBC) channels below 100 MHz, the narrowband (NB) channels between 400 and 2.5 GHz, and ultrawideband (UWB) channels from 3 to 10 GHz. After explaining bio-electromagnetics attributes of the human body, physical, and numerical body phantoms are presented along with electromagnetic propagation tool models. Then, the first-order and the second-order channel statistics for NB and UWB channels are covered with a special emphasis on body posture, mobility, and antenna effects. For capacitively, galvanically, and magnetically coupled HBC channels, four different channel modeling methods (i.e., analytical, numerical, circuit, and empirical) are investigated, and electrode effects are discussed. Finally, interested readers are provided with open research challenges and potential future research directions.
Highlights
T HE Internet of Things (IoT) is a technological revolution that integrates the physical and digital worlds by interconnecting uniquely identifiable smart objects [1]
Noting that subsequent sections go over Internet of Bodies (IoBs) requirements in detail, the focus of this survey will be on the channel modeling and their interwoven relations with risks, concerns, and challenges
We focus on channel characterization techniques which are based on analytical, numerical, circuit, and empirical models
Summary
T HE Internet of Things (IoT) is a technological revolution that integrates the physical and digital worlds by interconnecting uniquely identifiable smart objects [1]. The recent report of international data corporation forecasts that an estimated 22 billion IoT devices in 2018 are foreseen to reach 41.6 billion in 2025, generating 79.4 zettabytes of data.1 These numbers and ambitious goals naturally propel IoT as a mega-trend in next-generation communication and information technologies (ICTs). The IoT can be classified into Internet of X-Things where X may stand for space [2], underground [3], underwater [4], industrial [5], wearable [6], defense and public safety [7], medical [8], and so on. We narrow the scope to the body-centric IoT, which will be referred to as the Internet of Bodies (IoBs) throughout the text
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