Body coupled communication: The channel and implantable sensors

Abstract

To enable long-term medical monitoring, power consumption of the sensor nodes must be minimized. Most sensors power budgets are dominated by storing acquired data to memory or transmitting the information off the node. Body area networks (BAN) can decrease the power used by the sensor node and can be formed using body coupled communication (BCC). This paper will propose and verify an electrical model of the human body for BCC. This body model gives greater insight into how BCC works and how receiver architecture affects channel gain. Utilizing this insight the channel gain was increased by almost 20 dB. The proposed model allows for implants and explains how implants are able to transmit information outside the body using BCC. As it is important to have electrically isolated equipment to measure the BCC channel, a battery-powered wireless transmitter and receiver were created to measure the channel gain. The design of the measurement equipment is also detailed.