RF Propagation from Wearable and Implantable Medical Sensors

Knowledge of propagation media is a key step toward a successful transceiver design. Such information is typically gathered by conducting physical experiments – measuring and processing the corresponding data to obtain channel characteristics. With implantable medical sensors, this process could be extremely difficult, if not impossible. To overcome this challenge, NIST has designed and developed an innovative immersive visualization environment that allows for more natural interaction between experts with different backgrounds, such as engineering and medical sciences. This virtual environment can be used as a scientific instrument that offers researchers the ability to observe RF propagation from medical implants inside a human body. Additionally, since obtaining large amounts of propagation data for many scenarios and use-cases is difficult for wearable medical sensors, a detailed simulation platform can be extremely beneficial in highlighting the propagation behavior of the body surface and determining the best scenarios for limited physical measurements. Therefore, NIST researchers are using the immersive visualization environment to study RF propagation over the surface of a human body.