An Ultra-Wideband Sensor Node Development with Dual-Frequency Band for Medical Signal Monitoring

Abstract

Impulse Radio-Ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) can be considered as an attractive wireless technology for WBAN applications due to its inherent features, such as low power consuming transmitter design, low complexity hardware implementation, possibility of developing sensor nodes with small form factors and high data rate capability. However, IR-UWB receivers are complex in design and consume large amount of power compared to IR-UWB transmitters. This poses a challenge to use IR-UWB technology in low-power WBAN devices. This chapter discusses the hardware implementation of a dual band communication system for body area network applications that consists of a compact wearable sensor node design and an off-body coordinator node. Hardware architecture of sensor nodes is designed in such a way that it uses UWB for data transmission while a narrow band link is used for data reception. This chapter analyses the design considerations regarding the hardware implementation of compact sensor nodes, such as avoiding the interference between UWB and narrow band sections of the sensor node, Radio Frequency (RF) impedance matching techniques and circuit miniaturization techniques. It also depicts experimental measurements obtained using the dual band communication system.