Electromagnetic models for the optimization of body-centric antennas

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Dirk Manteuffel
• Subject Area: Electronic Semiconductors, Components and Circuits, Integrated Systems, Sensor Technology, Theoretical Electrical Engineering
• Term: from 2016 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 299309683

Body-centric wireless communications expands to ever more applications in the field of multimedia (e.g. smart googles, -watches and phones), personal safety equipment (e. g. telemetry diagnostics for firefighters and miners) and medical applications (e.g. diagnostics, telemetry of implants, remote sensing and treatment). Particularly in the case of safety equipment and medical applications the radio link needs to be secure and reliable. In addition, the electronic frontend incl. the antenna needs to be compact and integrated into the chassis of the application. In order to address both aspects, solid knowledge of the wireless channel and the appropriate antenna characteristic is inevitable. While such antenna characteristics exist for free space communication channels, an adequate metric for radio wave propagation on the body is not yet available.In order to enable the optimization of such body centric antennas we aim at fundamentally investigating various radio channel for body-centric applications. This shall be the prerequisite for the development of analytic pathloss models based on space waves and surface wave guides along the body contour. These models shall enable the definition antenna parameters for body centric antennas fitted to the propagation phenomena of those channel. In order to treat the various combinations of antennas on and in the body the following generic scenarios will be investigated: a) On-body to on-body link, b) implant to on-body link, c) implant to implant link.The analytic model of surface wave propagation on the body will be based on flat propagation links first and will then be adapted to curved shapes for both, line-of-sight paths and non-line-of-sight paths. As a result we shall be able to model an antenna located on/in the body and fit this model to different types of analytic pathloss models for body centric propagation scenarios. The flexibility in exchanging different antennas for a given channel shall enable the derivation of fundamental design guideline for such antennas.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants