Design of a radio system for capsule endoscopy through a pathloss analysis

This paper presents a design of radio systems for capsule endoscopy operating in the 400 MHz band. The design is conducted through estimating a link budget based on system requirements and limitations for the radio systems. In order to calculate the pathloss accounted in the link budget, a method to estimate the pathloss is introduced that brings a patient-specific pathloss model. This method allows calculating the pathloss estimates between the capsule device in the small intestine and on-body antennas. The results show that the use of an antenna diversity technique is crucial to increase the channel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in capsule endoscopy. Also, the location onto which the on-body antennas are attached is important to bring the diversity gain.