Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2012 Jul;59(7):2051-9. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2012.2197212. Epub 2012 May 2.
Wearable and implantable medical sensors have been investigated continuously in recent years to provide better diagnostics and monitoring for personal health care. Much attention has been drawn to the establishment of the ubiquitous body area network (BAN) to reliably connect the body sensors and collect the sensor data in real time. Electric-field intrabody communication (EF-IBC) is a promising physical link technology for the body area network. Compared to existing wireless technologies, EF-IBC fits the body characteristics better and is able to achieve higher data rate with less transmission power. EF-IBC relies on the parasitic capacitive coupling between the transmitter and the receiver to close the signal circuit loop. With this parasitic coupling, EF-IBC links can be influenced by the environment. However until now, there is lack of systematic research on various environment coupling effects to the EF-IBC channel. In this paper, environment effects on the EF-IBC channel are comprehensively studied. The interference from the nearby EF-IBC channel is investigated for the first time to gain useful insights into the establishment of the BAN with EF-IBC. The FEM model is also established to explain the mechanism of the capacitive return path.
近年来，可穿戴和植入式医疗传感器一直受到广泛关注，旨在为个人医疗保健提供更好的诊断和监测。人们高度关注建立无处不在的体域网（BAN），以可靠地连接身体传感器并实时采集传感器数据。电场体内通信（EF-IBC）是一种很有前途的体域网物理链路技术。与现有无线技术相比，EF-IBC 更符合人体特性，能够以更少的传输功率实现更高的数据速率。EF-IBC 依赖于发射器和接收器之间的寄生电容耦合来闭合信号电路环路。通过这种寄生耦合，EF-IBC 链路可能会受到环境的影响。然而，到目前为止，对于各种环境耦合效应对 EF-IBC 信道的影响，还缺乏系统的研究。在本文中，全面研究了环境效应对 EF-IBC 信道的影响。首次研究了附近 EF-IBC 信道的干扰，以深入了解使用 EF-IBC 建立 BAN。还建立了 FEM 模型来解释电容返回路径的机制。
