Galvanic coupling Intra-Body Communication link for real-time channel assessment

Abstract

The emerging field of Intra-Body Communication (IBC) will result in the innovation of many health care applications by allowing in-situ monitoring and mobility for the human subjects. We use a technique called Galvanic Coupling (GC) that uses weak electrical currents for the intra-body links, instead of RF, as this is two orders of magnitude superior when comparing energy efficiency. In this work, we demonstrate an experimental setup that can be used to implement and validate physical layer communication schemes and link layer protocols using off-the-shelf hardware and commercially procured synthetic human tissue. Our setup uses Universal Software Radio Peripherals (USRPs) as the transmitter and receiver nodes, with additional interfacing electronics, to allow flexible transmission of signals in the 100 kHz - 1 MHz frequency range. Furthermore, we provide a visual GUI-based configuration as well as demonstration of link quality based results. The complete hardware and software design, as well as an instructional video, are made available license-free for public consumption to stimulate further research in this field.