Ultrawideband Technology in Medicine: A Survey

Abstract

<jats:p>The utilization of wireless technology in traditional medical services provides patients with enhanced mobility. This has a positive effect on the recovery speed of a person after major surgical procedures or prolonged illness. Ultrawideband (UWB) radio signals have inherent characteristics that make them highly suitable for less invasive medical applications. This paper surveys our own and related recent research on UWB technology for medical sensing and communications. Some research perspectives in the aforementioned topics are suggested too.</jats:p>

Wireless Body Sensor Communication Systems Based on UWB and IBC Technologies: State-of-the-Art and Open Challenges

“…Characteristics of UWB systems, such as high-data-rate, immunity to fading, reduced power spectral density, centimeter-level location estimation, low-cost, and fine time resolution (large bandwidth), make this communication technology suitable for applications related to the WBAN domain [ 4 , 5 , 8 , 9 ]. Furthermore, due to the above-mentioned characteristics, the UWB signal does not cause significant interference to other systems operating in the vicinity and does not represent a threat to the patients’ safety [ 18 ]. Moreover, UWB transmission, unlike narrowband and broadband technologies, is not based on modulated sinusoidal carriers; therefore, in the architecture of transmitters and receivers, there is no need for components such as local oscillators, mixers for frequency transposition to the desired band in the radio frequency (RF) spectrum, and reconstruction on the receiver side.…”

“…Such characteristics make them available in the market for commercial applications at low price. Lately, there has been a growing interest in research of applications of UWB systems in the health sector, e.g., for vital signs monitoring [ 11 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ], breast tumor detection [ 10 , 26 , 27 , 28 ], and for the wireless capsule endoscopy [ 9 , 18 , 29 , 30 , 31 ]. Besides the communication interface, UWB can be used as a radar in remote sensing and imaging techniques [ 19 , 32 , 33 , 34 ].…”

Wireless Patient Monitoring System using UWB Antenna Interfaced with CC3200

“…However, for in-hospital healthcare and during surgery in an operating room, a more powerful computer is necessary to display more complex signals such as ECG. This computer is referred to as patient monitor (PM) and is connected to the BNC through a high-data-rate UWB interface, namely, the ECMA-368 radio interface [3]. This radio interface works on multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM), and can support 480 Mbps within distances of up to 3 m and 110 Mbps up to 10 m.…”

Wideband Circularly Polarized MIMO Antenna for High Data Wearable Biotelemetric Devices

“…Another issue to consider is the data rate as biomedical devices nowadays are required to receive and transmit data at a high rate. For instance, modern image sensors can transfer high quality images at a rate of 78 Mbps [7]. In that regard, the selection of the operating band becomes critical, and the ISM band (2.4 GHz) presents a suitable choice for high data rate devices [8].…”