A Simulation Environment for Subject-Specific Radio Channel Modeling in Wireless Body Sensor Networks

Abstract

This paper presents a simulation environment, based on the parallel finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, for subject-specific radio channel modeling in wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs). The simulation environment takes into account realistic antenna radiation patterns in channel modeling to analyze their effects on WBSNs. The proposed simulation tool is applied to a study of body communication channels in a hospital environment and the results are validated by site measurement. It is found from our study that radio channel characteristics in WBSNs are subject specific and associated with human genders and body mass indices (BMIs).