A Method of Increasing Data Rate for Human Body Communication System for Body Area Network Applications

Abstract

Human body communications (HBC), which have been standardized in IEEE 802.15.6 standard for wireless body area networks (WBAN), provides a maximum data rate of 1.3125 Mbps through frequency selective digital transmission (FSDT). This paper reviews FSDT and proposes a modified FSDT (MFSDT). By exploiting the efficient modification of the FSDT's transmitter structure, MFSDT achieves a maximum data rate of 3.9375 Mbps, and the decoding complexity of MFSDT increases linearly with an increase in the data rate. In addition, FSDT and MFSDT performance are investigated with respect to the effects of the transmit filter provided to meet transmit spectral mask requirements, and a human body channel modeled as a finite impulse response filter.