Wireless Body Area Channel Measurement and Modeling

Abstract

Attention about the wireless body area networks (WBAN) system which based on IEEE802.15.6 for implantable medical device or wearable equipment has been increasing. While key devices, such as wearable device, medical device, demonstrate the potential for key technology of future. There are utilized in smart-watch to provide a variety of functions by interlocking smartphones, activity tracker to record user daily workouts or exercise information, u-healthcare to record biometric information such as blood glucose, blood pressure, heart rate, etc. Channel modeling is required in order to design and test the WBAN system. For the wearable devices, the positions of the device is changed according to the human movement. The state of the channel is changed by the position or velocity of the body. For the channel model considering the static situation, it is not appropriate to model the time varying channel according to the changes of human body posture. In addition, channel modeling through a body is quite difficult unlike that in the air since. It can be affected the channel characteristic such as propagation speed, channel gain, absorption depends on the permittivity values of the propagation medium. Therefore, communication channel should be considered the implantable cases. In this paper, our goal is to implement the channel modelling through practical experiment that can reflect time changes due to movement of the body. I analyzed the channel characteristics such as multipath, Doppler effect, Shadowing through practical experiment through time variation according to the human moves. I determined the human body channel according to the changes in the changes of posture or the implants in the human body. ⓒ 2015 DGIST