Impact of propagation characteristics on RSSI-based localization for 400 MHz MICS band implant body area networks

One of promising application offered by implant body area networks (BANs) is a capsule endoscope localization system. To begin with, this paper performs finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations on implant BAN propagation with a numerical human model, and investigates the propagation characteristics of implant BAN signals at 400 MHz medical implant communication service (MICS) band. Then, the paper presents a capsule endoscope localization system which utilizes only received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and two localization methods, such as a maximum likelihood (ML) estimation method and a least squares (LS) method. Our simulation results demonstrate that careful consideration of the propagation characteristics of implant BANs signals is efficient in terms of estimation performance improvement in capsule endoscope localization.