Electrical Engineering-Systems Dept.

*** SEMINAR ***

Ron Toledano

(M.Sc. student under the supervision of Prof. Simon Litsyn)

on the subject:

Wireless communication through in-vivo channels

Implanted wireless devices are small-sized, low-power medical devices designed to monitor in-body biologic signals and to transmit the acquired digital data through a wireless link to a receiver located out of the body.  As these devices are gaining popularity, the new models may be smaller and probably will demand higher data-rates, and so transmission through the human body should become a greater challenge.

The model of the human body as a transmission medium for wireless purposes is not well characterized in literature, and in practice sub-optimal communication schemes are adopted for actual platforms of this kind. For example, many of these devices use the low-MHz frequency range to avoid large losses, though there is not enough bandwidth available in this range to accommodate high-bit rates implanted devices.

In this talk we will focus on this wireless link, which we refer to as the invivo wireless channel.  We begin by describing the expected obstacles presented by this channel, and continue by describing the simulations set-up using highly accurate 3D models of the human body. The simulated results will allow us to answer questions such as optimal frequency allocation (for ISM bands), optimal antenna location (for on-body antennas). For example, as opposed to previously related researches which showed quite pessimistic results regarding the higher MHz range, we show that even the 2.4GHz band can be used for some scenarios.

Later, we generate new communication models which will serve us for evaluating the capacity and error performance of this channel at various conditions, which has not been calculated before. We will see that for some segments of the human body, the capacity is much decreased compared to others, however by adopting several low-complexity MIMO schemes the capacity can be significantly increased.