Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1 Federal
Communications
Commission (FCC)-regulated
spectral mask for indoor
ultra-wideband (UWB)
propagation
day, physicians can get a more realistic idea how the blood pressure built up prior
to reaching a certain threshold. Also, it can eliminate inaccurate results caused by
changed physical conditions which occur due to travelling to the hospital. It also
makes it easy to keep track of the patient's or sportsman's health history. An early
health warning system can also be implemented using this technology.
With the recent advancement in wireless sensor networks and miniaturized hard-
ware technologies, it has been possible to implement wireless networks which operate
in and around the human body. Wireless body area networks (WBAN) is a network-
ing concept which has evolved with the idea of monitoring vital physiological signals
from low-power and miniaturized in-body or on-body sensors [ 2 ]. WBANs can be
seen as special purpose sensor networks designed to satisfy quality-of-service (QoS)
requirements of physiological signals operating in different environments.
Ultra-wideband (UWB) has attracted the attention of the researchers worldwide
as a lucrative wireless technology for WBAN applications in recent years [ 3 - 6 ].
The key advantages of the UWB technology, such as low power consumption, high
data rate capability, small form factor, and susceptibility to multipath components,
provide a significant edge over the existing narrowband (NB) technologies such as
medical implant communication system (MICS) [ 7 ], Bluetooth [ 8 ], ZigBee [ 9 ], and
wireless local area networks (WLAN) [ 10 ].
The UWB frequency spectrum is defined as having a fractional bandwidth larger
than 0.2 or at least 500 MHz. The fractional bandwidth is defined as the bandwidth
ratio between the
10 dB lower and upper corner frequency difference and the center
frequency of a signal. UWB is allowed to operate in the 0-960 MHz and 3.1-10 GHz
bands; however, the effective isotopic radiated power (EIRP) must be kept below
41 dBm/MHz [ 11 ]. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-regulated
spectral mask for indoor UWB propagation is shown in Fig. 1 .
WBAN applications, such as microelectronic arrays, neural recording systems,
and wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) systems, use multichannel monitoring,
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