Virtual Reality Platform to Study RF Propagation in Body Area Networks

Published

December 2, 2012

Author(s)

Kamran Sayrafian, John G. Hagedorn, Wen-Bin Yang, Judith E. Terrill

Abstract

Design of efficient wireless communication protocols for body area networks requires in-depth understanding of the propagation media i.e. the human body. As obtaining large amount of data for many scenarios and use-cases via physical experiment is either difficult or sometimes nearly impossible (e.g. implant communication), a detailed 3D simulation platform can be extremely beneficial in highlighting the RF propagation characteristics inside and around the human body. Such a platform provides not only insight into radio wave propagation in the human body but also it could be used to determine the best scenarios for limited physical measurements and experimentation. In this paper, an immersive visualization environment is presented, which is used as a scientific instrument that gives us the ability to observe three-dimensional RF propagation from wearable and implantable medical sensors. We have used this virtual environment to study various RF communication channels inside or over the surface of a human body.

Conference Dates

December 2-5, 2012

Conference Location

Kosice

Conference Title

3rd IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications (IEEE CogInfoCom 2012)

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

3D Immersive visualization system, Body Area Networks, Radio frequency propagation

Citation

Sayrafian, K. , Hagedorn, J. , Yang, W. and Terrill, J. (2012), Virtual Reality Platform to Study RF Propagation in Body Area Networks, 3rd IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications (IEEE CogInfoCom 2012), Kosice, -1, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=912376 (Accessed October 6, 2025)