Architectural hardware design of modulator and demodulator for galvanic coupling intra-body communication

In this work, galvanic coupling intra-body communication (IBC) is presented as a promising approach for wireless personal health monitoring system. The architectural hardware design of a QPSK modulated data communication system for galvanic coupling IBC is proposed. The channel characteristics of the human body are first reviewed. Hardware design is performed using VHDL codes and realized in FPGA devices. ModelSim and Quartus II design environment are used for the functional and timing verification. The whole design is efficiently fitted into an Altera Cyclone II 2C35 FPGA chip. The proposed solution has shown its feasibility in the study of galvanic coupling IBC at the physical layer. Moreover, the whole design is flexible for the functional enhancements such as channel coding and channel equalization in the future research.