Compact Antenna Solutions for Data Transmission Using Fat-Intrabody Communication (Fat-IBC)

Fat intra-body communication (Fat-IBC) is a novel communication technique aiming at exploiting the very low electrical conductivity of subcutaneous fat tissue to convey electromagnetic signals among implantable and wearable biomedical devices. This paper describes the design of two on-body antenna solutions, optimized to transmit signals along the body exploiting the subcutaneous fat tissue as a communication channel. The designed antennas have been fabricated and tested on a three-layer phantom model emulating the dielectric properties of skin, fat and muscle, inserted in a portable chamber to reduce external interference and minimize alternative propagation paths, i.e., outside the fat channel. Preliminary data rate transmission measurements computed using two Raspberry Pi units allowed link speeds in the range of 90 Mbps for one of the two considered antenna pairs, demonstrating the ability of the designed solution to efficiently couple the radiation into the tissue-mimicking phantoms and transmit signals through the fat layer.