Wearable Body Area Networks for Wireless Communication, Medical and IoT Applications

The development of compact wearable transceivers and antennas for communication, IoT and biomedical systems will be presented in this paper. The main goal of wireless body area networks (BANs), WBANs, is to provide continuously medical data to the physician. Development of Compact efficient wearable antennas are one of the major challenges in development of wearable communication, IoT, and medical systems. A new class of wideband active wearable antennas for medical applications is presented in this paper. Amplifiers may be connected to the wearable antenna feed line to increase the system dynamic range. Small lightweight batteries supply the bias voltage to the active components. An active dual polarized antenna is presented in this paper. The active dual polarized antenna gain is 14 ± 3 dB for frequencies ranging from 380 to 600 MHz. The active transmitting dual polarized antenna output power is around 18 dBm. An ultra-wideband passive and active printed slot antenna may be employed in wideband wearable wireless communication systems for medical applications. The active slot antenna gain is 13 ± 2 dB for frequencies from 800 MHz to 3 GHz. A typical wireless body area network consists of several compact low-power sensing devices, a control unit, and wireless transceivers. Three to four active compact antennas or active loop antennas may be assembled in a belt and attached to the patient stomach or back. The antennas receive signals that are transmitted from sensors that are located on the patient body.

Computed and measured results will be presented.