Analysis of path loss characteristics in Body Area Network for different physical structures

Electronic prostheses require a communication link to other on‐body nodes, for example, for control signal extraction. This link can be made wireless to improve user experience compared to wired solutions. Even though ample on‐body communication techniques have been described for wireless body area networks, in prosthetics, the efficiency of wireless links is often neglected, in particular when radio frequency (RF) antennas are used. This work aims to show the benefit of on‐body RF antenna design for prosthetics, by developing a dedicated antenna for use in a lower arm prosthesis. Additionally, this work tries to fill a gap in literature, where some antennas for dedicated on‐body RF communication are presented, but no antennas specific for communication along the arm exist. To this aim, numerical simulations are performed using a cylindrically layered arm model to design a novel, electrically small, capacitively loaded, meandered, 2.45 GHz monopole antenna. The antenna is fabricated using 3D printed polylactic acid and validated both in a static human arm channel and in a dynamic setting, where the human subject performs various tasks. This antenna outperforms an off‐the‐shelf printed circuit board (PCB) antenna by 18 dB and a rectangular patch antenna by 4 dB in terms of link budget at a separation distance of 20 cm, both in line of sight and non‐LOS path loss experiments. Additionally, while performing four commonplace activities, the average power received increased by 20 dB in an on‐body link established between two of our novel antennas rather than two of the PCB antennas. These results will aid in the development of wireless prostheses used by a growing number of amputees.

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“…The integrated IFA antenna of ref. [37] also performs poorly, similar to the BLE PCB antenna of the Particle Argon evaluated in this work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 66%

An on‐body antenna for control of a wireless prosthesis in the 2.45 GHz industrial scientific and medical frequency band

Proesmans

Deprez

Velghe

et al. 2022

IET Microwaves Antenna & Prop

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“…Path loss in WBAN refers to the attenuation or reduction in signal power as it travels through the human body or the surrounding environment. It can be captured by different models based on the application and the environment in which sensors are placed [64]. In this work, we use a log-distance path loss model, which considers the effect of obstacles and objects as well as various environmental factors such as attenuation, reflection, diffraction, and scattering.…”

Section: Path Lossmentioning

confidence: 99%

HCEL: Hybrid Clustering Approach for Extending WBAN Lifetime

Helal,

Sallabi,

Sharaf

et al. 2024

Mathematics

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Wireless body area networks (WBANs) have emerged as a promising solution for addressing challenges faced by elderly individuals, limited medical facilities, and various chronic medical conditions. WBANs consist of wearable sensing and computing devices interconnected through wireless communication channels, enabling the collection and transmission of vital physiological data. However, the energy constraints of the battery-powered sensor nodes in WBANs pose a significant challenge to ensuring long-term operational efficiency. Two-hop routing protocols have been suggested to extend the stability period and maximize the network’s lifetime. These protocols select appropriate parent nodes or forwarders with a maximum of two hops to relay data from sensor nodes to the sink. While numerous energy-efficient routing solutions have been proposed for WBANs, reliability has often been overlooked. Our paper introduces an energy-efficient routing protocol called a Hybrid Clustering Approach for Extending WBAN Lifetime (HCEL) to address these limitations. HCEL leverages a utility function to select parent nodes based on residual energy (RE), proximity to the sink node, and the received signal strength indicator (RSSI). The parent node selection process also incorporates an energy threshold value and a constrained number of serving nodes. The main goal is to extend the overall lifetime of all nodes within the network. Through extensive simulations, the study shows that HCEL outperforms both Stable Increased Throughput Multihop Protocol for Link Efficiency (SIMPLE) and Energy-Efficient Reliable Routing Scheme (ERRS) protocols in several key performance metrics. The specific findings of our article highlight the superior performance of HCEL in terms of increased network stability, extended network lifetime, reduced energy consumption, improved data throughput, minimized delays, and improved link reliability.

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“…Moreover, the structure of the infrastructure within which the WBAN operates can also contribute to radio link loss due to prospective partition losses [52]. To overcome excessive signal power losses, WBAN designers must choose a suitable modulation scheme and propagation paths [53,54].…”

Section: Path Lossmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance issues in wireless body area networks for the healthcare application: a survey and future prospects

2021

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This study presents a survey of the current issues, application areas, findings, and performance challenges in wireless body area networks (WBAN). The survey discusses selected areas in WBAN signal processing, network reliability, spectrum management, security, and WBAN integration with other technologies for highly efficient future healthcare applications. The foundation of the study bases on the recent growing advances in microelectronic technology and commercialization, which ease device availability, miniaturization, and communication. The survey considers a systemic review conducted using reports, standard documents, and peer-reviewed articles. Based on the comprehensive review, we find WBANs faces several operational, standardization, and security issues, affecting performance and maintenance of user safety and privacy. We envision the increasing dependency of future healthcare on WBAN for medical and non-medical applications due to internet connectivity advances. In this view, despite the WBAN advantages in remote health monitoring, further studies need to be conducted for performance optimization. Therefore we finalize our study by proposing various current and future research directions and open issues in WBAN’s performance enhancement.

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Analysis of path loss characteristics in Body Area Network for different physical structures

Cited by 10 publications

References 8 publications

An on‐body antenna for control of a wireless prosthesis in the 2.45 GHz industrial scientific and medical frequency band

An on‐body antenna for control of a wireless prosthesis in the 2.45 GHz industrial scientific and medical frequency band

HCEL: Hybrid Clustering Approach for Extending WBAN Lifetime

Performance issues in wireless body area networks for the healthcare application: a survey and future prospects

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