92 Mb/s Fat-Intrabody Communication (Fat-IBC) With Low-Cost WLAN Hardware.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Wireless Communication
• Implantable and Wearable Devices

Background:

• The human body's subcutaneous fat, skin, and muscle can function as a waveguide for microwave transmissions.
• This property enables low-loss communication for body area networks (BANs), including implantable and wearable systems.
• Existing wireless technologies require further exploration for efficient intrabody data transmission.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore fat-intrabody communication (Fat-IBC) as a human body-centric wireless communication link.
• To evaluate the feasibility of achieving high-speed intrabody communication using off-the-shelf hardware.
• To characterize the performance of Fat-IBC links with various antenna configurations and phantom models.

Main Methods:

• Utilized wireless local area network (WLAN) in the 2.4 GHz band with Raspberry Pi single-board computers.
• Tested IEEE 802.11n wireless communication with inbody and onbody antenna combinations.
• Characterized link performance using scattering parameters, bit error rate (BER) for different modulation schemes, and emulated human body phantoms.

Main Results:

• Achieved link speeds of 92 Mb/s using 40 MHz bandwidth, exceeding the target 64 Mb/s.
• Demonstrated that the Fat-IBC link is highly linear, supporting complex modulations up to 512-QAM without significant BER degradation.
• Identified radio circuits, not the Fat-IBC link itself, as the likely bottleneck for data rates.

Conclusions:

• Fat-IBC, utilizing low-cost hardware and established IEEE 802.11 standards, can support high-speed intrabody data communication.
• The achieved data rates are among the fastest recorded for intrabody communication systems.
• This technology holds significant potential for advancing implantable and wearable body area networks.