STUDY OF CHANNEL MODELS FOR BODY CENTRIC COMMUNICATIONS

Body centric communication is termed as body to body or within body communication with the help of wearable or implantable wireless devices. It has wide range of application areas like healthcare, military, entertainment and control of smart home appliances. With the advancement in the electronic components and information and communication technologies along with ever decrease in the antenna size has promised development of vast range of devices that can be useful in above mentioned fields especially in medical science. Recent studies carried out on millimetre waves have shown many advantages of making communication systems work in this spectrum of wavelength. Firstly, advantage in the reaching high data rates because of large available spectrum that is 7GHz. Secondly low interference with adjacent networks with high security level. Most importantly size of millimetre wave systems is smaller as compared to systems using microwaves. The aim of this thesis is to conduct a study on currently available channel models for body area network, but we will also have a look on other type of body centric communication systems. Initially we are going to discuss some of the standardized models presented in the IEEE 802.15.6 and IEEE 802.15.4 standards. After that we will be considering two of the most popular technologies currently being used namely narrowband communications and ultrawideband communications. We will also have a look on the radio channel modelling techniques and their requirements. Finally, we will highlight some newest relevant research in other areas of body centric communication.