Body-coupled communication for body sensor networks

Authors:
Adam T. Barth;Mark A. Hanson;Harry C. Powell, Jr.;Dincer Unluer;Stephen G. Wilson;John Lach
Affiliations:
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA;University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA;University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA;University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA;University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA;University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
Venue:
BodyNets '08 Proceedings of the ICST 3rd international conference on Body area networks
Year:
2008

Citing 3
Cited 9

Personal area networks: near-field intrabody communication

IBM Systems Journal
Energy Scavenging for Mobile and Wireless Electronics

IEEE Pervasive Computing
Body Sensor Networks

Body Sensor Networks

Key-sharing via channel randomness in narrowband body area networks: is everyday movement sufficient?

BodyNets '09 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Body Area Networks
Body Area Networks: A Survey

Mobile Networks and Applications
Recognizing whether sensors are on the same body

Pervasive'11 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Pervasive computing
Body area networks for ambulatory psychophysiological monitoring: a survey of off-the-shelf sensor systems

Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Body Area Networks
Pervasive communications in healthcare

Computer Communications
Privacy in mobile technology for personal healthcare

ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Sensor network security for pervasive e-health

Security and Communication Networks
Recognizing whether sensors are on the same body

Pervasive and Mobile Computing
A Survey of Routing Protocols in Wireless Body Area Networks for Healthcare Applications

International Journal of E-Health and Medical Communications

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Body sensor networks (BSNs) offer a wealth of opportunities for precise, accurate, continuous, and non-invasive sensing of physiological phenomena, but their unique operating environment, the body-area, poses unique technical challenges. Popular communications solutions that utilize 2.4 GHz radio transmission suffer from significant and highly variable path loss in this setting. To compensate for such loss, radio transceivers often transmit at power levels at or above 1 mW -- a reality that limits battery life. We propose the use of body-coupled communication to address this issue, as it presents several distinct advantages over existing solutions, namely: reduced power consumption, minimal interference, and increased privacy. In this paper, we demonstrate a 23 MHz body-coupled channel that supports reliable data transfer with an average received power of 30 dBm over a 2.4 GHz radio frequency link. This scheme reduces power needed for transmission and increases battery life by up to 100%, while maintaining a favorable environment for application-specific quality of service requirements. Finally, we propose a system-level hardware architecture and explore its implications on BSN infrastructure.