Department of Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon 16499, Korea.
Sensors (Basel). 2019 Jan 16;19(2):341. doi: 10.3390/s19020341.
Intra-body Communication (IBC) is a communication method using the human body as a communication medium, in which body-attached devices exchange electro-magnetic (EM) wave signals with each other. The fact that our human body consists of water and electrolytes allows such communication methods to be possible. Such a communication technology can be used to design novel body area networks that are secure and resilient towards external radio interference. While being an attractive technology for enabling new applications for human body-centered ubiquitous applications, network protocols for IBC systems is yet under-explored. The IEEE 802.15.6 standards present physical and medium access control (MAC) layer protocols for IBC, but, due to many simplifications, we find that its MAC protocol is limited in providing an environment to enable high data rate applications. This work, based on empirical EM wave propagation measurements made for the human body communication channel, presents IB-MAC, a centralized Time-division multiple access (TDMA) protocol that takes in consideration the transmission latency the body channel induces. Our results, in which we use an event-based simulator to compare the performance of IB-MAC with two different IEEE 802.15.6 standard-compliant MAC protocols and a state-of-the art TDMA-based MAC protocol for IBC, suggest that IB-MAC is suitable for supporting high data rate applications with comparable radio duty cycle and latency performance.
体内通信（IBC）是一种使用人体作为通信介质的通信方法，其中附着在人体上的设备通过电磁（EM）波信号相互交换信息。我们人体由水和电解质组成，这使得这种通信方法成为可能。这种通信技术可用于设计新型的体域网，使其对外部无线电干扰具有安全性和弹性。虽然它是一种有吸引力的技术，可以为以人为中心的普及应用提供新的应用，但 IBC 系统的网络协议仍未得到充分探索。IEEE 802.15.6 标准为 IBC 提供了物理层和媒体访问控制（MAC）层协议，但由于许多简化，我们发现其 MAC 协议在提供支持高速率应用程序的环境方面存在局限性。这项工作基于针对人体通信信道进行的经验性 EM 波传播测量，提出了 IB-MAC，这是一种集中式时分多址（TDMA）协议，考虑了人体信道引起的传输延迟。我们的结果表明，使用基于事件的模拟器比较 IB-MAC 与两种不同的符合 IEEE 802.15.6 标准的 MAC 协议以及一种用于 IBC 的最先进的基于 TDMA 的 MAC 协议的性能，IB-MAC 适合支持高速率应用程序，具有可比的无线电占空比和延迟性能。
