With the rapid increase of various uses of wireless communications in modern life, the high microwave and millimeter wave frequency bands are attracting much attention. However, the existing databases on above 6GHz radio-frequency (RF) electromagnetic (EM) field exposure of biological bodies are obviously insufficient. An in-vivo research project on local and whole-body exposure of rats to RF-EM fields above 6GHz was started in Japan in 2013. This study aims to perform a dosimetric design for the whole-body-average specific absorption rates (WBA-SARs) of unconstrained rats exposed to 6GHz RF-EM fields in a reverberation chamber (RC). The required input power into the RC is clarified using a two-step evaluation method in order to achieve a target exposure level in rats. The two-step method, which incorporates the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) numerical solutions with electric field measurements in an RC exposure system, is used as an evaluation method to determine the whole-body exposure level in the rats. In order to verify the validity of the two-step method, we use S-parameter measurements inside the RC to experimentally derive the WBA-SARs with rat-equivalent phantoms and then compare those with the FDTD-calculated ones. It was shown that the difference between the two-step method and the S-parameter measurements is within 1.63dB, which reveals the validity and usefulness of the two-step technique.

In this study, we propose a two-step approach to evaluate electromagnetic interference (EMI) with a wearable vital signal sensor. The two-step approach combines a quasi-static electromagnetic (EM) field analysis and an electric circuit analysis, and is applied to the EMI evaluation at frequencies below 1 MHz for our developed wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) to demonstrate its usefulness. The quasi-static EM field analysis gives the common mode voltage coupled from the incident EM field at the ECG sensing electrodes, and the electric circuit analysis quantifies a differential mode voltage at the differential amplifier output of the ECG detection circuit. The differential mode voltage has been shown to come from a conversion from the common mode voltage due to an imbalance between the contact impedances of the two sensing electrodes. When the contact impedance is resistive, the induced differential mode voltage increases with frequency up to 100kHz, and keeps constant after 100kHz, i.e., exhibits a high pass filter characteristic. While when the contact impedance is capacitive, the differential mode voltage exhibits a band pass filter characteristic with the maximum at frequency of around 150kHz. The differential voltage may achieve nearly 1V at the differential amplifier output for an imbalance of 30% under 10V/m plane-wave incident electric field, and completely mask the ECG signal. It is essential to reduce the imbalance as much as possible so as to prevent a significant interference voltage in the amplified ECG signal.

This paper aims to achieve a high-quality exposure level quantification of whole-body average-specific absorption rates (WBA-SARs) for small animals in a medium-size reverberation chamber (RC). A two-step method, which incorporates the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) numerical solutions with electric field measurements in an RC-type exposure system, has been used as an evaluation method to determine the whole-body exposure level in small animals. However, there is little data that quantitatively demonstrate the validity and accuracy of this method in an RC up to now. In order to clarify the validity of the two-step method, we compare the physical quantities in terms of electric field strength and WBA-SARs by using a direct numerical assessment method known as the method of moments (MoM) with ten homogenous gel phantoms placed in an RC with 2GHz exposure. The comparison results show that the relative errors between the two-step method and the MoM approach are approximately below 10%, which reveals the validity and usefulness of the two-step technique. Finally, we perform a dosimetric analysis of the WBA-SARs for anatomical mouse models with the two-step method and determine the input power related to our developed RC-exposure system to achieve a target exposure level in small animals.

This paper presents a new way to classify different radiation sources by the parameter of directivity, which is a characteristic parameter of electromagnetic radiation sources. The parameter can be determined from measurements of the electric field intensity radiating in all directions in space. We develop three basic antenna models, which are for 3GHz operation, and set 125,000 groups of cube receiving arrays along the main lobe of their radiation patterns to receive the data of far field electric intensity in groups. Then the Back Propagation (BP) neural network and the Support Vector Machine (SVM) method are adopted to analyze training data set, and build and test the classification model. Owing to the powerful nonlinear simulation ability, the SVM method offers higher classification accuracy than the BP neural network in noise environment. At last, the classification model is comprehensively evaluated in three aspects, which are capability of noise immunity, F1 measure and the normalization method.

This paper aims at channel modeling and bit error rate (BER) performance improvement with diversity reception for in-body to on-body ultra wideband (UWB) communication for capsule endoscope application. The channel characteristics are firstly extracted from 3.4 to 4.8 GHz by using finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulations incorporated with an anatomical human body model, and then a two-path impulse response channel model is proposed. Based on the two-path channel model, a spatial diversity reception technique is applied to improve the communication performance. Since the received signal power at each receiver location follows a lognormal distribution after summing the two path components, we investigate two methods to approximate the lognormal sum distribution in the combined diversity channel. As a result, the method matching a short Gauss-Hermite approximation of the moment generating function (MGF) of the lognormal sum with that of a lognormal distribution exhibits high accuracy and flexibility. With the derived probability density function (PDF) for the combined diversity signals, the average BER performances for impulse-radio (IR) UWB with non-coherent detection are investigated to clarify the diversity effect by both theoretical analysis and computer simulation. The results realize an improvement around 10 dB on Eb/No at BER of 10-3 for two-branch diversity reception.

Channel modeling is a vital step in designing transceivers for wireless implant communication systems due to the extremely challenging environment of the human body. In this paper, the in-to-on body path loss and group delay were first analyzed using an electric dipole and a current loop in the 10-60MHz human body communication band. A path loss model was derived using finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulation and an anatomical human body model. As a result, it was found that the path loss increases with distance in an exponent of 5.6 for dipole and 3.9 for loop, and the group delay variation is within 1ns for both dipole and loop which suggests a flat phase response. Moreover, the electric and magnetic field distributions revealed that the magnetic field components dominate in-body signal transmission in this frequency band. Based on the analysis results of the implant channel, the link budget was analyzed. An experiment on a prototype transceiver was also performed to validate the path loss model and bit error rate (BER) performance. The experimentally derived path loss exponent was between the electric dipole path loss exponent and the current loop path loss exponent, and the BER measurement showed the feasibility of 20Mbps implant communication up to a body depth of at least 15cm.

Space diversity reception is well known as a technique that can improve the performance of wireless communication systems without any temporal and spectral resource expansion. Implant body area networks (BANs) require high-speed transmission and low energy consumption. Therefore, applying spatial diversity reception to implant BANs can be expected to fulfill these requirements. For this purpose, this paper presents a local frequency offset diversity system with π/4-differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) for implant BANs that offer improved communication performance with a simpler receiver structure, and evaluates the proposal's bit error rate (BER) performance by theoretical analysis. In the theoretical analysis, it is difficult to analytically derive the probability density function (pdf) on the combined signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) at the local offset frequency diversity receiver output. Therefore, this paper adopts the moment generating function approximation method and demonstrates that the resulting theoretical analyses yield performances that basically match the results of computer simulations. We first confirm that the local frequency offset diversity reception can effectively improve the communication performance of implant BANs. Next, we perform an analysis of a realistic communication performance, namely, a link budget analysis based on derived BER performance and evaluate the link parameters including system margin, maximum link distance and required transmit power. These analyses demonstrate that the local frequency offset diversity system can realize a reliable communication link in a realistic implant BAN scenario.

Wireless body area networks (BANs) are attracting great attention as a future technology of wireless networks for healthcare and medical applications. Wireless BANs can generally be divided into two categories, i.e., wearable BANs and implant BANs. However, the performance requirements and channel propagation characteristics of these two kinds of BANs are quite different from each other, that is, wireless signals are approximately transmitted along the human body as a surface wave in wearable BANs, on the other hand, the signals are transmitted through the human tissues in implant BANs. As an effective solution for this problem, this paper first introduces a dual-mode communication system, which is composed of transmitters for in-body and on-body communications and a receiver for both communications. Then, we evaluate the bit error rate (BER) performance of the dual-mode communication system via computer simulations based on realistic channel models, which can reasonably represent the propagation characteristics of on-body and in-body communications. Finally, we conduct a link budget analysis based on the derived BER performances and discuss the link parameters including system margin, maximum link distance, data rate and required transmit power. Our computer simulation results and analysis results demonstrate the feasibility of the dual-mode communication system in wireless BANs.