Body-Centric Wireless Communications

The development of wearable computer systems has been growing rapidly. These are becoming smaller and more lightweight: no one wants to wear a bulky and heavy computer all day!

We will soon see a wide range of unobtrusive wearable and ubiquitous computing equipment integrated to into our everyday clothes. In a possible wearable computer, the monitor/display would be on a pair of glasses, the keyboard worn on the wrist, and the motherboard worn on the waist. It is undesireable to use bulky cables to connect these devices, so communication will be wireless, using an antenna.

News

**Antennas & Propagation for Body-Centric Wireless Communication Seminar & ESoA Course**

The Antennas Group (represented by Prof. Yang Hao) will organise the IET Seminar on Antennas & propagation for Body-Centric Wireless Communications to be held on 20th April 2009 in the IET Savor Place, London, followed by a 4-day European School of Antenna (ESoA) course on the same topic to be held in Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Campus, London.

Concepts

We are working on the important issue of the design of such an antenna. We are particularly considering the following issues:

• The antenna itself must be small and lightweight, since it is part of a lightweight device;
• The small size of the antenna must not reduce its performance;
• The antenna structure must be designed to have limited radiation power in the direction of the wearer, to minimize possible health problems;
• The transmission power must be low, to prolong battery life and hence operating time.
  
• Textile conformal antennas to provide user-friendly solutions
  
• Surface guided wave antenna to improve on-body communications
  
• Radio propagation in complex environments and considering dispersive human tissues
  
• System-level modelling for potential narrowband and ultra wideband communication systems.

Highlights

• The group has published a book, 2 book chapters and more than 50 substantial journal and refereed conference papers on Body-Centric Wireless Communications. Please refer to Publications by Prof Yang Hao.
• This work is in collaboration with many academic partners (Imperial College London, University of Birmingham, etc.) and industrial collaborators (DSTL, Philips Research, GE Global Research, Toumaz Technologies Ltd., etc.)
• The group has organised/co-organised more than 2 workshops related to body-centric wireless networks and in 2008 the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation will publish a special issue on Body-Centric Communications guest-editted by Prof Yang Hao.

See also:

• Body-Centric Wireless Sensor Lab, Antenna Group, QMUL.
• UK Ubiquitous Computing Resources