Prize-Winning Ohio University Students Present Their Work on an Antenna for Body Area Networks [Education Corner]

This article provides details on the OU BAN system that was submitted to the 2015 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) Student Design Contest: Antenna for Body Area Networks. The team completed this project as its undergraduate senior capstone design sequence. The system senses heart rate with a chest-mounted heart rate monitor and transmits these data to a bodymounted receiver using a 5.5-kHz data link; the low frequency of this link helps minimize body effects. Additionally, temperature and provisions for fall detection using an IMU are incorporated. Sensor data are provided to an Arduino microcontroller and interfaced with a BLE transceiver to transmit data via a specifically designed inset-fed patch antenna. The torso-mounted BLE patch antenna provided good match efficiency and good radiation coverage in the forward and downward directions. Sensor data were transmitted from the torso-mounted BLE antenna to a Nexus 5 smartphone running a custom-built Android application on the smartphone. Various subsystem and anechoic chamber system-level tests were performed. The data indicate satisfactory performance of the demonstrated OU BAN system with the Bluetooth antenna mounted to the user's torso and the smartphone in three test locations: held in the hand 1 m in front of the torso, in the front pocket, and in the back pocket. The OU BAN configuration could be improved by miniaturizing the system to be more easily worn by the user.