Performance Evaluation and Improvement of PER and Throughput in Galvanic-Coupling Intra-Body Communication Systems

This study examined the following communication characteristics of contact and partially non-contact galvanic intra-body communication (IBC) systems using a human-body path loss model developed previously: 1) packet error rate (PER) calculation for the contact and partially non-contact IBC path, and PER improvement by the low-density parity check (LDPC) error correction code; and 2) signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation using the blind SNR prediction method and throughput optimization using adaptive coding. The following results were obtained for these characteristics: 1) Applying the LDPC coding rate 3/4 through 1/4 can improve the required SNR by approximately 8~20 dB when PER = 10^-2; and 2) the blind SNR prediction method can estimate SNR precisely, thus realizing appropriate throughput communication.