Investigation of on-body Bluetooth transmission

The development of communication devices, especially cellular phones has necessitated the advances of several portable and wearable technologies, such as Bluetooth headsets within wireless body area networks (WBAN). Such wearable devices use the human body as a communication channel; hence, a comprehensive understanding of the transmission mechanism between such devices is vital. This study presents an investigative study to characterise the electromagnetic transmission between a body-mounted Bluetooth headset antenna and a mobile phone handset antenna. Commercially used antennas have been used to study various factors affecting on-body communication links including handset-to-body separation and presence of blocking objects. A thorough numerical modelling, supported by the measurements, has been carried out to demonstrate the importance of surface waves in the on-body Bluetooth transmission.