Advances in Body-Centric Wireless Communication: Applications and state-of-the-art

Body centric wireless networking and communications is an emerging 4G technology for short (1-5 m) and very short (below 1 m) range communications systems, used to connect devices worn on (or in) the body, or between two people in close proximity. It has great potential for applications in healthcare delivery, entertainment, surveillance, and emergency services. This book brings together contributions from a multidisciplinary team of researchers in the field of wireless and mobile communications, signal processing and medical measurements to present the underlying theory, implementation challenges and applications of this exciting new technology. Topics covered include: diversity and cooperative communications in body area networks; ultra wideband radio channel characterisation for body-centric wireless communication; sparse characterisation of body-centric radio channels; antenna / human body interactions in the 60 GHz band; antennas for ingestible capsule telemetry; in vivo wireless channel modelling; diversity and MIMO for efficient front-end design of body-centric wireless communications devices; on-body antennas and radio channels for GPS applications; textile substrate integrated waveguide technology for the next-generation wearable microwave systems; ultra wideband body-centric networks for localisation and motion capture application; down scaling to the nano-scale in body-centric nano-networks; and the road ahead for body-centric wireless communication and networks.