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Next Generation Body Centric Communications
Investigator: Dr. Simon Cotton
The last few years have seen significant improvements in our understanding of the communications process between wireless devices co-located on the human body. Research into body centric communications (or human focussed comms) particularly 'on-body' communications has been driven by the requirement for specialised applications such as wireless body area networks (WBANs) which can be used to monitor, among other things, the wearer's health. While this new knowledge has already led to innovations in antenna and systems design for devices designed to share information across the surface of the human body, little work has been done to address the next major challenge - how that information can be efficiently transferred to an off-body location through 'off-body' communications. Future developments in body centric communications will see users becoming an important part of a novel, ubiquitous wireless networking paradigm, where they are seamlessly connected to network infrastructure through interaction with nearby wireless devices embedded in local surroundings and other bodyworn devices mounted on persons in the immediate vicinity. Smart spaces and existing telecoms solutions will support the acquisition of body related parameters from wireless body area networks. This will lead to direct improvements in personalised healthcare and treatment away from medical centres, reducing strain on healthcare budgets.
Another key part of this overall vision will be the formation of vast body-to-body networks (BBNs) of co-located persons that will employ cooperative communications to alleviate bandwidth restraints and reduce base station density in mobile networks by using inactive users as relays. BBNs will therefore be an important part of next generation mobile wireless and instrumental in providing 'anytime, anywhere' network connectivity. They also have the potential to revolutionise everyday life by supporting the creation of huge mobile computing clouds, improving interpersonal communications for groups of emergency first responders, and enhancing physiological data exchange in team sports.
Challenges: Convergence of body centric systems with smart space networks and the formation of BBNs will require significant innovation in technology, product development and protocol standardisation due to the unique time- and space-varying propagation characteristics encountered. Modelling of the wireless channels used for body centric communications is therefore paramount as it provides system designers with important information on transceiver design characteristics, optimises on-board signal processing if the stochastic behaviour of the channel is known a priori, aides protocol design, testing of error correcting codes, optimisation of interleaver size as well as facilitating data throughput analysis.
The modelling of body centric channels is an extremely complex task due to antenna-body interaction effects, and time varying received signal characteristics which may range from quasi-cyclostationary to completely stochastic depending on the person's current physiological state. Further difficulties arise due to anisotropic signal reception caused by radiation pattern distortion and inhomogeneous scattering conditions, rendering traditional mobile channel models which assume isotropic scattering, inappropriate. This project brings together a team of national and international academic, industrial and institutional experts, with the common goal of achieving a new understanding of body centric communications which will lead to future innovation and product development in the area. This success will be underpinned by: a thorough understanding of the role of physiological and biomechanical processes in determining channel characteristics of body centric systems through the use of time series models; the creation of a repository of novel narrow and wideband analytical and statistical models for body centric channels; determining the maximum realistic channel capacity available in MIMO body centric applications; and quantifying the impact of human activity on future ultra high bandwidth communications.
Publication Output - Examples
- S.L. Cotton, U.S. Dias, W.G. Scanlon & M.D. Yacoub, 'On the distribution of signal phase in body area networks,' IEEE Communications Letters, Vol. 14, 8, pp. 728–730, Aug. 2010. [doi: 10.1109/LCOMM.2010.08.100673]
- S.L. Cotton, W.G. Scanlon & P.S. Hall, 'A simulated study of co-channel inter-BAN interference at 2.45 GHz and 60 GHz,' 3rd European Conference on Wireless Technology (EuWiT), Paris, France, pp. 61-64, Sep. 2010.
Support
This project is funded by a Royal Academy of Engineering / EPSRC Research Fellowship under grant reference EP/H044191/1.
