On the WBAN radio channel modelling for medical applications

Radio channel modelling for wireless body area network (WBAN) has attained a lot of activities in the last years. The reason is the huge activity increase at WBAN applications in healthcare and monitoring. Also standardization procedure has required proper channel models. This paper summary the radio channel measurement and modelling activities for WBAN applications carried out in hospital environment by the Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland. To fulfil the environmental requirements, the actual measurements were carried out at the Oulu University Hospital premises, in the typical final use places. Different scenarios and link topologies were covered at the measurements. The results show that WBAN channel differs from, e.g., typical office channel models and there is an evident need for aimed channel models for close body communication.