Asymmetric Multihop Networks for Multi-capsule Communications within the Gastrointestinal Tract

The advancements in wireless communication and electronic technologies enable novel health monitoring devices to be developed and deployed for in-vivo medical examination and treatment. Wireless capsule which can examine the gastrointestinal tract with many kinds of sensors and send the collected data outside the human body wirelessly is very promising. To the authors’ best knowledge, no previous work has been done for using multihop communication in multi-capsule networks. In this paper, multihop communications through the human body is proved effective for saving energy at a given transmit/receive circuitry power consumption by simulation. The total energy saving ratio can be more than 90%. This paper also proposes a novel topology for multi-capsule networks, which utilizes asymmetric uplink and downlink routes for bidirectional communication. In this way, the network can achieve a better tradeoff between power consumption and delay performance.