Characterizing On-Body Wireless Sensor Networks

The main goal of this work is to characterise communications through body area networks (BANs), analysing how the human body affects wireless links qualities. 802.15.4 MICAz motes were deployed on seven on-body locations of four volunteers and a test-dummy. The quality of the communications was monitored in order to study the channel behaviour. Results show that the human body clearly modifies communication properties, introducing attenuations of up to 26 dB. Differences between male and female subjects were found to be unimportant. Body posture affects the performance, mainly because of body shadowing. LoS together with the channels dynamic nature are key issues to achieve connectivity. Power settings and the local environment also influence the BANs performance.