On channel characterization in human body communication for medical monitoring systems

The emerging intra-body communication (IBC) and networking system is a prospective component in advancing healthcare delivery and empowering the development of future medical monitoring systems. Using the human body as a transmission medium unfastened the research perspective towards Human Body Communication which has been introduced by the IEEE as a third physical layer. Generally, there are two approaches of HBC, namely, capacitive coupling and galvanic coupling. In this paper, the concept of galvanic coupling is adopted as a method for wireless transmission inside the human body. Then, the channel characteristics of the HBC based on the IEEE 802.15.6 standards are addressed where we focus on both the frequency response and the noise characterization. The results obtained are necessary for developing a realistic human-body channel model capable of estimating the performances of wearable systems using HBC technology.