PATH LOSS ESTIMATION FOR BONE IMPLANTABLE APPLICATIONS

The implantable body sensor network (IBSN) has many promising applications. The sensors in the network support different functionalities, such as glucose monitoring and strain measurement in bones. These sensors work with a central hub that communicates with a receiver outside the body. A reliable communication link between these sensors is essential. In this paper, the path loss between elliptic circular loop antennas in muscle and two different bones (the humerus and femoral bone) has been estimated at 403 MHz inside the CST Katja voxel body model. A 33 dB larger path loss is obtained between muscle and humerus antennas than that between muscle and femoral bone antennas. Hence, a standard link with an ideal phase shift keying (PSK) can be only built up from the femoral bone to the the muscle above the hip. The results in this paper provide a good source of data for link budget calculations for bone implantable applications.