Investigation of obstacle effect on wireless optical on-body communication performance

Wireless optical technology is an attractive alternative solution to radiofrequency (RF) one for medical applications, in particular in the case of on-body communications. Actually, it permits avoiding RF interferences on medical equipment and ensuring zero RF exposure for the patient and the medical staff. To perform wireless optical on-body communication, we study a diffuse optical transmission scheme based on optical reflections over the environment. The investigated scenario is the optical communication between a sensor node and a hub both placed on the patient body. In this paper, we propose a new, fast and simple method to determine the communication performance considering the environment and the presence of an obstacle above the hub. Thanks to this method, we discuss the effect on the performance of optical reflection coefficients of the different reflective surfaces. It permits improving the design of a diffuse wireless optical link for our health monitoring application, by taking into account the environment.