The objective of this study was to develop anatomically correct whole body human models of an adult male (34 years old), an adult female (26 years old) and two children (an 11-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy) for the optimized evaluation of electromagnetic exposure. These four models are referred to as the Virtual Family. They are based on high resolution magnetic resonance (MR) images of healthy volunteers. More than 80 different tissue types were distinguished during the segmentation. To improve the accuracy and the effectiveness of the segmentation, a novel semi-automated tool was used to analyze and segment the data. All tissues and organs were reconstructed as three-dimensional (3D) unstructured triangulated surface objects, yielding high precision images of individual features of the body. This greatly enhances the meshing flexibility and the accuracy with respect to thin tissue layers and small organs in comparison with the traditional voxel-based representation of anatomical models. Conformal computational techniques were also applied. The techniques and tools developed in this study can be used to more effectively develop future models and further improve the accuracy of the models for various applications. For research purposes, the four models are provided for free to the scientific community.

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The Virtual Family—development of surface-based anatomical models of two adults and two children for dosimetric simulations

Performance of a dual-band coplanar patch antenna integrated with an electromagnetic band gap substrate is described. The antenna structure is made from common clothing fabrics and operates at the 2.45 and 5 GHz wireless bands. The design of the coplanar antenna, band gap substrate, and their integration is presented. The band gap array consists of just 3 times 3 elements but reduces radiation into the body by over 10 dB and improves the antenna gain by 3 dB. The performance of the antenna under bending conditions and when placed on the human body are presented.

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Dual-Band Wearable Textile Antenna on an EBG Substrate

A systematic study of the high frequency electrical properties of electro-textiles is presented in this paper. First, conductive thread characterization is completed with a waveguide cavity method. The effect of conductive thread density and comparison of several different types of conductive threads are included. Second, comparisons of knitted patterns and weave patterns are made in terms of effective electrical conductivity through a microstrip resonator method. The effect of various weave patterns on conductive and dielectric loss is detailed. Finally, the relevance of the high frequency characterization of the electro-textile materials is shown through electro-textile patch antenna fabrication and measurements. The efficiency of the fully fabric patch antenna is as high as 78% due to the use of low loss electrotextiles characterized in this paper.

High Frequency Properties of Electro-Textiles for Wearable Antenna Applications

Utilization of wearable textiles in the antenna segment has been seen on the rise due to the recent miniaturization of wireless devices. A wearable antenna is meant to be a part of the clothing used for communication purposes, which includes tracking and navigation, mobile computing and public safety. This literature review intend to disclose this unconventional antenna technology and provides readers with the background of the wearable antenna that would include about specification of the antenna, material for the antenna and analysis that must be done to design proper wearable antennas. All the designs presented are of the recent development in wearable technology.

A review of wearable antenna

A new compact planar ultrawideband (UWB) antenna designed for on-body communications is presented. The antenna is characterized in free space, on a homogeneous phantom modeling a human arm, and on a realistic high-resolution whole-body voxel model. In all configurations it demonstrates very satisfactory features for on-body propagation. The results are presented in terms of return loss, radiation pattern, efficiency, and E-field distribution. The antenna shows very good performance within the 3-11.2 GHz range, and therefore it might be used successfully for the 3.1-10.6 GHz IR-UWB systems. The simulation results for the return loss and radiation patterns are in good agreement with measurements. Finally, a time-domain analysis over the whole-body voxel model is performed for impulse radio applications, and transmission scenarios with several antennas placed on the body are analyzed and compared.

A Compact UWB Antenna for On-Body Applications

A new ultrawideband (UWB) textile antenna designed for UWB wireless body area network (WBAN) applications is presented. Unlike previous textile antennas, these antennas offer a direct integration into clothing due to a very small thickness (0.5 mm) and flexibility. We have realized two different designs of textile antennas: coplanar waveguide fed printed UWB disc monopole and UWB annular slot antenna. To our knowledge, these are the first textile UWB antennas reported in the open literature. Measured return loss and radiation pattern characteristics of textile UWB antennas agree well with simulations. Moreover, measured transfer functions show that these textile antennas possess excellent transient characteristics, when operating in free space as well as on the human body. They can operate in the entire UWB band approved by the Federal Communications Commission (3.1-10.6 GHz)

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Textile UWB Antennas for Wireless Body Area Networks

This paper presents electromagnetic energy absorption in the homogeneous and layered human body models due to body-worn UWB antennas, at frequencies of 3, 6 and 8 GHz. Typical small planar UWB antennas are used in this study: printed UWB disc monopole and UWB slot antenna. Distances of 2, 5 and 10 mm (reactive near-field region) between antennas and human body were chosen, approximating realistic scenarios of operation in Wireless Body Area Networks. To approximate different parts of the human body, or body variations among different users, we compare results obtained for the planar homogeneous (muscle) model with those for three-layer body models (skin, fat and muscle), with different thicknesses of the skin (0.5- 2 mm) and fat (1-9 mm) tissue. For these body models we investigate the electromagnetic energy absorption mechanism by examining the peak 1-g SAR and peak SAR (without mass averaging). Based on our results we present and discuss new finding concerning the general electromagnetic energy absorption mechanism in human tissues under reactive near-fields exposure conditions.

/pdf/em-energy-absorption-in-the-human-body-tissues-due-to-uwb-4p149tzheu.pdf

G. Troester

Papers

Textile UWB Antennas for Wireless Body Area Networks

Em energy absorption in the human body tissues due to uwb antennas