Wave propagation with HBC in a human arm model

Abstract

Today's interest in health assistance systems, sport activities, person's vital signs observing and remote patient monitoring require distributing various types of sensors at specific places across the human body. These sensors might be used to measure temperature, blood pressure level, blood glucose level and the like. This implies collecting the data generated at the distributed sensors in a wireless Body Area Network (BAN) and fusing these data at an access point (e.g. wristwatch) and then to a central processing unit (i.e., PC) for diagnosing, as shown in Fig. 1. However, sending data wirelessly is typically a very energy intensive task implying large batteries. Hence, BAN networks have been developed by IEEE 802.15.Task Group (TG6) to serve a variety of applications including medical, consumer lifestyle and the like at a low power consumption. Human Body Communications (HBC) is one technique used in BAN networks that utilizes the human body as a transmission medium to transfer data between sensors on, in or at the proximity of the human body using electrodes (i.e., electrical conductors).