Performance evaluation of wireless optical communication for mobile body area network scenario with blocking effects

Using wireless optical communication (WOC) to establish on-body links constitutes a promising solution to address radiofrequency interference issues in body area network (BAN) especially concerning medical applications. Actually, this permits decreasing electromagnetic perturbations in the patient body environment. To evaluate WOC performance for BAN scenario, the authors investigate on-body communication between a BAN node and the central unit placed on the patient which is supposed to be moving in a room. Considering a diffuse optical transmission scheme based on optical reflections over the environment, the authors propose an adapted, fast and simple method to determine the performance taking into account the presence of obstacles in the room. Thanks to this method, the authors evaluate the WOC outage probability assuming uniform node mobility on the patient body and patient mobility in the environment. The results permit discussing the WOC robustness according to the optical reflection properties of the blocking elements and show the WOC potentialities for mobile medical BAN scenario.