Realistic path loss estimation for capacitive body-coupled communication

Realistic estimation of path loss is vital for designing an effective capacitive body-coupled communication system. The estimation based on simplified analytical models, however, results in errors as they do not model capacitive couplers accurately and different body positions. The proposed efficient full-wave electromagnetic (EM) model takes into account the effect of capacitive coupler, electro-physiological properties of tissues in human body, different body positions and environment all together to realistically predict the path loss. A comparison of both approaches is made in this paper, showing the superior performance of the proposed model.