Performance Comparison between Intra-Body and Radio Frequency Wireless Communication for Foot Plantar Pressure Measurement

The sharp boost in healthcare demand has seen novel developments in health monitoring technologies, such as Intra-body communication (IBC). IBC technology envisions a network of continuously operating sensors that measure critical physical and physiological parameters, such as mobility, heart rate and glucose levels just to name a few. Wireless connectivity in IBC technology is the key to its success as it grants portability and flexibility to the user. While radio frequency (RF) wireless technology has been successfully deployed in most biomedical implementations, they consume a lot of power, are susceptible to electromagnetic interference and have security issues. IBC treats the human body as a transmission medium for transmitting and receiving electrical signals. Two IBC methods have been proposed in the literature: galvanic coupling and capacitive coupling. This paper compares and evaluates a binary frequency-shift keying (BFSK) modulation signal using RF, IBC galvanic and IBC capacitive coupling for foot plantar pressure sensors. IBC has characteristics that could naturally address the issues with RF for biomedical technology. The research targets IBC operating in the band from 1 MHz to 100 MHz, and RF operating at 2.4 GHz. Based on the empirical evidence; for this particular application, galvanic coupling shows more promising performance in power and signal-to-noise ratio measurements.